Why Are We Setting Ourselves Up?

Before I begin this post I want to make it clear....I am so guilty of what I am about to discuss. Why, oh why, do we set ourselves up for these crazy holidays?!?!?

Christmas has always been sheer insanity for as long as I remember with gift giving, decorating, going all out, but now we, as moms, set ourselves up for Valentine's Day, Easter, St. Patrick's Day and so on and so on and so on! The little holidays such as Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day now involve making these crazy traps, giving toys, multitudes of candy, presents etc. We drive ourselves mad finding the perfect trinkets, when in reality our kids would love us just the same if they got one small thing. Besides, on most holidays, we don't even get the credit: Santa, The Easter bunny, the leprechauns, they all steal our thunder!

So my question is why? Why do we do this to ourselves? Is it because we feel guilty for working? Not spending enough time with our kids? It is because we want to be Pinterest perfect and be able to show off our mom boss prowess to our Facebook and Instagram followers? Is because we are over compensating for the fact that maybe we didn't get all of this as children so we want to give it to our kids? Is it a combination of all of the above?

Now, I clearly stated in the beginning of this post that I am guilty of going crazy too and sometimes it takes my husband saying to me, "Le...it's enough, we did enough for them," to make me realize we have to stop somewhere. We have to talk ourselves down from this madness and realize, "Don't raise your kids to have more than you had, raise them to be more than you were." The author of that quote is unknown but damn they were spot on....let's all keep this in mind as we enter in to another crazy holiday.