Ready or Not, Here It Comes!!

We're in the final countdown now, only 4 days until Christmas. I can't believe it has snuck up on me so quickly. I guess I'm basically ready, just a few last minute items to get for Christmas dinner, etc. I think this is the first year I've actually put most of the presents under the tree BEFORE Christmas Eve. Adalyn is almost 4 and has been really good about not opening the presents, though she keeps eating all the candy canes off the Christmas tree. I think it helped that I let her "help" me wrap a lot of the presents, so she already knows what's inside. She even helped me wrap one of HER presents that accidentally fell out of the closet while she was helping me.

With Austyn and Madeline's baptism this Saturday I've been getting a little stressed with last-minute details for that. I finally assigned the last talk last week, made food assignments, and today I located & reserved a set of keys for the building, so I'm breathing a little sigh of relief this afternoon. Now we just have to arrange who is picking up the main food and when. I still need to have Austyn try on his suit again and see if it still fits well enough to wear that day. My family is on their way into town today and will probably be over here for a while tomorrow.

As work had died out completely at my old job I had not yet put in my notice to quit. So, LUCKY ME, they worked out a new agreement with the client and now have PLENTY of work for me to do. So, now I am up early working on one job, finishing up just in time to start working on my other job. So far it hasn't been too bad, I've been able to get things done, but I feel like I am working all day and things around the house don't get done. Hopefully I can still get all my work done with the kids all home this next two weeks.

Alexia and Austyn have both been enjoying Jr Jazz basketball this last couple weeks, though it really fills up our Saturdays having two games to attend, one in the morning then one in the afternoon. Austyn got a good hit to the nose when catching a rebound this last Saturday, giving him a bloody nose. Luckily nothing too serious and we were able to get him cleaned up and back into the game in about 10 minutes.

Ashley and Alexia have been performing with the Magna Music Makers several times over the past couple weeks as well. I was able to watch their performance this last week and they both did a really good job.

We celebrated Austyn's 8th birthday with dinner at Del Taco, his place of choice. We hurried home after dinner to get Andrew to scouts, Ashley to piano and Austyn to his first cub scout pack meeting. What a busy evening!! Austyn is really excited to start in cub scouts.

The kids had their annual sleepover at Emily & Nate's place on Friday the 11th. Emily said Addie was welcome to sleep over as well, but I didn't think she would actually sleep. I did, however, let Addie stay and participate in the party until 8:00 and she had a lot of fun. In the meantime, I went with Mary & Frank to their ward Christmas party that Mary was in charge of. I helped a bit where I could to keep things running smoothly and it was a lot of fun.

I've been looking forward to Christmas cards this year, but it seems the current trend is to send portrait postcards instead. Not that I don't love to see everyone's pictures, they just don't stand up on the piano nicely like Christmas cards do, in fact, I'm not quite sure what to do with them. I don't want to throw away pictures, but how to save them? Maybe I'll have to cut out the main pictures and write the year/names on the back and put them in a photo album. That should at least take care of most of them.

As if the days before Christmas aren't busy enough, I've managed to also schedule a couple last minute appointments this week. Andrew and Alexia to the orthodontist tomorrow and a doctor's appointment on Wednesday. These are days when I don't particularly care for our current location. We have the necessities close by, grocery, fast food, library, gas station, but our orthodontist and dentist are both a good 20 minutes away and most of our doctors are at least 30 minutes drive time. Thankfully we don't have to go to any of them very often.

I guess I better get back to all that work I mentioned earlier, or making dinner, or cleaning the house, or that last minute shopping I have to do, or laundry, or . . . . . .