Well, the season is in full swing. It seems that there is something every night and tons of things to take up my days.
- I have finished my christmas shopping (Yayyyy!!!!)
- and I've even got most of it wrapped.
- I put up all the outdoor christmas lights.
- Nate and I attended a small get together last week hosted by his boss and
- we enjoyed a casino night themed work party tonight;
- Toby performed in his band's christmas concert last week (he looks so cute in his tuxedo shirt, tie and cumberbund),
- We attended the ASO's performance of the Messiah with the 3 oldest kids
- We had a friends over to sing carols and eat cookies
- we are going to see the Trail of Lights in Zilker park tomorrow;
- We are reading Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, in the original (I didn't realize it was so wordy...I have to stop and summarize/explain pretty often.)
- We tivoed the first presidency's christmas message and watched part of it for FHE,
- we made lots of snowflakes (I am planning on sewing them together like in the anthropologie store display.)
- the ward Christmas party is on Friday where I will be a photographer and Santa will make an appearance (I'm interested to see how Hazel will react with this);
- Saturday is the high school's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,
- We had a breakfast for the people we visit teach and our visiting teachers (a great way to get all the visiting done for the month at once).
- The activity Day girls are going caroling,
- I think i will take the scouts to do something similar;
- I am going to take the kids to the children's museum to make gingerbread houses,
- we still need to put up the tree
- (but we do have our stockings up:).
- I finally made it to the post office to mail all my packages.
- I started baking for Christmas (But then stopped when I realized that we were just eating it all instead of saving some for later). I managed to lose 5 pounds right after Thanksgiving and I don't want to gain them back.
- I decided that the black dresses the girls already have will work for this christmas and passed on sewing new ones ( I'll do them for easter instead)
- (I have finally learned how to not overdo it to myself.)
- I bought the newest installment in the Uglies series of books called The Extras and am enjoying that in small doses (I really just want to sit down and read the whole thing at once, but I'm having a difficult time finding time to indulge)
- I am almost ready for christmas!
- Next on my list to tackle: Christmas photos and cards, the tree, collecting prizes for the Candy Game (I received a request to play it for Christmas as the requestor missed it at Thanksgiving) and cleaning and rearranging the house to fit all the guests coming for Christmas, and planning for The New Year's Eve Soiree we are planning.
I think we might actually make it through the holidays without too much stress!!!! Hope that you all are having similar good luck and enjoying the Spirit of the Christmas season!!! I'm going to go read my book for a minute or 20.
In the display below the lighted trees were synchronized with Christmas songs. Pretty cool to watch. The sky looks pretty cool because of the long exposure to get all the trees lit.
This tree is the oldest tree in Austin. I think that it is over 200 years old. But I might be off a little, my memory isn't so great lately.
At least the weather cooperated: it was a lot warmer (5o degrees) than the last couple days (40 degrees) and not raining or windy:) Then we went and got hot chocolates at the coffee shop. The kids loved the chocolate shavings, whip cream, and chocloate stirring stick they were given in their chocolates. (Hazel had to settle for soymilk cocoa and no toppings. But she was good with that). All in all it was a fun night.
