Another Week Closer to Christmas

Can you even believe that Christmas is only a week and a day away? A week from tomorrow we'll be opening presents, playing games, going to the movies, and celebrating my BFF Jen's birthday. (BFF, for those of you who are unsure, means Best Friend Forever. . . it makes me laugh and when I say it out loud I do it with that California, Valley Girl accent. Well hey, it makes ME laugh - no one was talking about you. You don't have to laugh. Hee hee!) I do not think any packages I need to send will get to their destinations in time. I only have 1 package to send, though. Everything else is small. I feel as though I am not nearly ready enough, though, because things have been rather stressful the past few weeks.

I started my new job 2 weeks ago and have been trying to get into the groove of things there. It is a lot more structured than my other web design gig, so I'm learning the ropes. I'm also trying to remember how to use certain aspects of Photoshop because it has been a while since I did much designing in that program. However, I think I've finally got a handle on things and so hopefully things will settle into a nice pattern and I can just add it to my list of things to do. The great thing? We don't work on weekends. I love that!

Tomorrow is my last day of teaching musical theatre until the new year. I'm planning on doing some work on our new show, but reserve a bulk of the time to just playing fun improv games and goofing off. My last voice lesson is on Thursday night. Next week I will not really be working at all. It will be nice to have a week of down time.

Since we don't have any family near for the holidays we've had to make adjustments in our life out here in the EAST. Usually we have had the missionaries over on Christmas Eve, but this year things are different and I do not believe that is an option. So we are heading over to my sweet friend Nancy's house. She was my roommate in college and up until about two (?) years ago lived up the street from me. However, she ran off and bought a house and moved about 30 minutes away (depending on traffic). Even though she isn't too far away geographically, our lives are both pretty hectic and we don't get to see each other much at all. So, we're going to go have food over there, hang out, do the whole Christmas Eve story of Christmas thing and what not . . . ya know, usual Christmas Eve stuff. This will be fun! I haven't seen Nancy and the kiddos since like . . September. I don't even remember the last time I saw Richard (Nancy's hubby) and Alan mentioned that he thinks it has been a year since he's seen them all. Crazy! So, good times. And no major cooking (which means the kitchen won't be dirty lol) at our house on Christmas Eve. Yay!

Soren had something exciting happen this past week. At his school they do a Geography Bee. I had only ever heard of a Spelling Bee, so I didn't even know this was happening. However, on Friday he came home and informed us that he made it to the semi-finals in the Geography Bee at his school! Of course, being Soren, he has now become not proud of this, but freaked out. He doesn't want to "look like a dufus" in front of the whole school if he gets an easy question wrong. We had a long talk and I think he's feeling better about things, but we'll be doing quite a bit of studying this afternoon and in the morning tomorrow. I just told him to go and do his best. We'll see how that all turns out!

It's time for me to get some things done around the house before Soren is home from school. Monday the kids get out of school at 1:15pm, so I don't get as much time to do stuff as usual. I also need to shower - I still smell like chlorine from my water aerobics! Later!