December so far

December has been going on as usual.  We've been doing all of the things that you just do during December, like spending way more time at the post office than I should be, and going to Costco and Target and (surprisingly enough), JoAnn's at least four or five times so far.  I've spent enough time online that now I just call Amazon.com  "Santa's Little Helper."  We've bought mulitple boxes of peppermint Joe Joes and I've consumed nearly a gallon of egg nog on my own (so maybe Adam has figured out that I don't don't like it any more).  We've done crafts for cub scout parties, school parties, and baked a ham for the ward party, where it may have been the first year that no child was screaming on Santa's lap and of course my camera runs out of batteries after I get only one blurry shot.  No wait, I forgot, there was the one other year when somebody (and I wish I could blame it on them being drunk, but that won't work) asked Adam to be the Santa for the ward party.  There probably wasn't a kid in the whole place who was fooled by Adam's Jolly Old Elf--I guess he's got the jolly and elf-like down, but not so much on the old.  And the black eyebrows are kind of a give away too, I think.  How my kids still believe in Santa is kind of a mystery after that one. 

Anyway, I bought a big puffy tree this year and we got it up just in time to host a fondue party for my neighborhood book group--that's how I roll: last minute.  We also prepared for piano and dance recitals, had haircuts, listened to hours of both bad and good Christmas music, watched the First Presidency Devotional, The Nutcracker, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Boris Karloff version!), and Mr Kruegar's Christmas.  We've faithfully lit our weekly Advent candle with an accompanying Christmas devotional, baked batches of sugar cookies, ginger cookies, and peanut butter cookies (you know, the Christmas kind! The ones with the Hershey's kiss on top!), and even managed to throw together an 11th-hour Christmas card, with a picture where all of the kids have their eyes closed or severly squinted, but I look awesome!  And now we're preparing for my sister Jayne to come tonight and spend the whole break with us, which should be great fun, as long as she doesn't mind babysitting tomorrow afternoon while I make another trip to Costco. 

p.s.  I love lists and parentheses and exclamation points (in case you hadn't noticed!)!!

The kids also got to sing at the mall with all of the other primary kids in our ward.  If only I had brought the video camera to get Max's actions while he was counting the correct amount of "oh's" sung during the "gloria's" in the refrain in "Angels We Have Heard on High."  But I did have my camera and it wasn't until I looked at the pictures later that I realized that Olivia had brought her black cat Webkinz and had it up "singing" with her the entire time.  Great. 

Also, I never got around to buying Saul any "Christmas" clothes--so it's navy blue and green for him this year!  I'll blame it on that for not getting any Christmas-y pictures sent out.

So far, it's all been pretty swell.