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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

It's past my bedtime, but I'm still up, because...

...I have a lot to do before tomorrow. I've got energy left to do it though, because...

...my sweet husband came home from a 12 hour work day and let me walk right past him, out the door to dinner with a dear friend. Our visit left me bubbling with energy, because...

...there's nothing like a good long conversation with someone you've been missing, who understands you better than most anyone. I needed it, because...

...life is hectic and burn-out is in my midst. But I'm going to beat it before it beats me, because...

...my life rocks and I know it. For instance, I just got done baking pastries for a Christmas party tomorrow, and I can type this post guilt free, without waking up to a mess in the kitchen, because...

...at this very moment a machine is washing all my dirty dishes for me! Thank you Mr. Smith, for an awesome early Christmas present, my very first dishwasher ever. Signing off...because...

...it's past my bedtime!!!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

A Visit From St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas came (on December 6th, of course) and left the boys each a new pair of slippers, a gold dollar coin, some tic tacs and a lovely little book, The Christmas Story. Here's a view of our tree:
For now, we have it decorated for Advent. We always cut our tree down ourselves, and we used to go Thanksgiving weekend every year. A few years ago, we decided to try not to jump straight to Christmas so soon, like the rest of the country does, and to work harder on observing Advent. We stopped getting the tree on the weekend of Thanksgiving. The only problem was, the further into December we got, the more hectic and busy life got, and before we knew it we were rushing out the last weekend before Christmas to squeeze in getting the tree. It felt like a chore. So this year we went back to getting it the last weekend in November, and as a compromise, decided not to put the Christmas decorations on it right away, but instead decorate it for Advent first. The boys made a paper chain of purple and pink links. The idea was to have this be our Jesse tree as well, and make wooden ornaments that we can use every year. When the ornaments weren't being made by mid-December, I knew that was off the list for this year. There's always next year...