Miscellany

It's been a bit crazy around here for the past few days -- the usual holiday preparations, of course, combined with the fact that I was laid up for all of yesterday with some strange sort of something that had me coughing and exhausted all day. Luckily, S was able to be home so I could sleep the day away. (And sleep it away, I did! Apparently, I really needed the rest.) It had come on really suddenly, and it seems to have left about as quickly. I was feeling much better this morning. Weird.

Is it really possible that Christmas is less than a week away? Golly. Thank goodness for online shopping. (Not just because it keeps Mama's Magic Studio in business!) Thank goodness, too, for the fact that I was pretty on the ball about things so didn't have to pay outrageous last minute shipping. I'm all but done with my shopping! Almost all of my gifts this year are either made by me or bought online (and many of those are from fellow Etsians). It's a good feeling to know that I didn't have to fight the crowds. The big downside: our bedroom got all but taken over by stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes. Over the last few days, I've started unpacking the boxes and wrapping stuff to put it under the tree, but there are still some boxes to open and deal with! I think we've had a delivery to the house every day except one for the past two weeks.

Other holiday miscellany worth noting:

• BB, for some reason, has decided that angels are not called angels. She is calling them "mermaids." This is particularly true of a little stuffed snowman angel that Nana J. gave to her as an early Christmas gift. She calls it her snowman mermaid.
• I have yet to make my baklava. I'd hoped to do it Friday but got sick. We'll see if I'm up for it soon....
• We had a nice time earlier this week decorating gingerbread cutouts with our friend C. Her little brother O is scooting all over the place now, which fascinates BB and BJ. Both my kids had some baby love going on. Very cute.
• We pulled out the Little People Nativity play set that my folks got for the kids last year, and it's been fun to see the kids play with it. BB likes to have little conversations with the figures, moving them about in typical kid fashion. BJ is more interested in setting up exact replicas (he likes to follow the picture on the box) and he's been reading enough Christmas stories that he now knows there "should" be three kings in the scene. The kings were not included in the set, so he borrowed two kings from our Little People castle. We don't have a third king so he settled for having King Three played by the Little People Robin Hood. Pretty funny to see that little setup around the tiny plastic Baby Jesus.

We have yet to make it down to Christmas in the Park downtown, which I hope happens soon (if the weather cooperates). I think the kids would really enjoy it. We also hope to go see some Christmas lights sometime after dark. Christmas cards have yet to be ordered, a few more stocking stuffers need to be purchased, and much wrapping of gifts is yet to be done. So there's plenty to fill up the few days left -- but all told, I'm feeling pretty relaxed about it all. Probably much of that is because for the first time since we've had kids, it will just be us for Christmas. It will be a low key kind of day (aside from the excited kids, of course) and that's just fine with me. After all, when we'd have Christmas at home in Delaware, the family tradition was to stay in our PJ's until well into the afternoon!