Christmas time is here again….

I was just thinking on my way to work this morning about all the things I need to do before Christmas. Then I got so irritated with myself… I told myself I wouldn’t do that this year – by the way, it looks like I talk to myself a lot, doesn’t it? Anyway, I’m a very interesting person to talk to! But that is besides the point. So I need to clean the house, finish some homemade Christmas presents, do some baking…blah, blah, blah… Then I feel rushed to do it in the next couple of weeks. I told myself that this year, I was going to enjoy every minute of Christmas. What is kind of hard is that it hasn’t gotten above 20 degrees since we’ve been home from T-giving, so no outside lights or decorations have gotten up. This year, for those who waited till after T-giving, it just hasn’t happened. There really aren’t that many light up anywhere. So even though it’s super cold and there is  snow everywhere, for some reason, it doesn’t feel like Christmas. We finally got our tree up and we have been enjoying that so much. I have a real annoyance and it has to do with all the local radio stations. There is not one single one that plays non stop Christmas music – we only get this season once a year – come on people – you would think they could play a little Christmas music! So that really irritates me. Probably because we spend so much time in the car and so we are subject to the radio. So yeah… This Saturday, I’ve got probably 20 high school students coming to my house to start the Progressive Dinner. It’ll have to go like this. Appetizers in the Kitchen, main course downstairs and dessert in the living room – we have no families opting up to host us. How’s that for a progressive dinner! Oh well. We’ll see. But I do need to get my families presents off in the mail so that they receive them by Christmas. We got Aunt Gayle and Uncle Jim’s to them at Thanksgiving, half of mom and dad’s to them at T-giving, now I’m just waiting on a couple of things and then I’ll have to mail those boxes. Why do we do this to ourselves – rush around thinking there is so much to do that we don’t even enjoy the Reason for the Season!

Last night we had Sam’s Staff Christmas party! It was great! First we had to write out our own menu – All the menu items had to do with something Christmasy and in no way described the food. We just had to write them out. Even our silverware was on the list. So out came the first course! I think I had potatoes, Peanut butter Pie, salad, ham and pasta salad. No drink, no fork, no spoon, not even a knife. Do you want to know how hard it is to eat peanut butter pie and green salad with no utensils? It was quite the experience! It was great fun! Then came time to exchange presents. Now, just so you know – we are suppose to collect presents at our Annual Church Rummage Sale. So to make a very long story short, our Maintainence person got the Administrative Asst. a gigantic nutcracker. We are talking a telephone post cut down to about 6 foot and painted like a nutcracker. It’s heavier than anything and extremely hiddeous! It comes complete with a fuzzy hat and everything! So it’s solid and about 6 ft high and a foot in diameter – solid and HEAVY! Anyway – when we got home last night, guess who was sitting on our step – you guessed it, the Nutcracker! So at 9:30 last night, we got the great idea to drop it off at our Music Director’s house! So we piled it in the Blazer and drove back over to Bismarck. Well, the only problem is that they have windows all across the front of their house and Beth and Brad told them they were going to drop it off at our house. So as Sam stepped onto their front porch – there was this huge crack – and they heard it inside. So we were busted! Then we grabbed it again and took it to our Administrative Pastor’s house. We were so excited about it! But then I guess Scott wasn’t quite as excited to see it this morning as we thought he would be! Oh well! It reminded me of the time Lori and I delivered her “Science project” to Larry before they were married! That will have to be another story!!! Well, I guess I should get back to work… Enough about our crazy ventures! Have a great week just enjoying every moment of this Christmas season – don’t worry it away like I have been doing!