Three days to go, so much to do...

It's been pretty frantic lately. The trade show ended Thursday noon last week; I went Christmas shopping on Friday since I had put in three very long days. I think if I added up all the hours, they would still owe me a day or two -- but that's sales. Anyway, I got most of my shopping done, and am now working on stocking stuffers. I have a lot of stockings to stuff, as you can see.




The Little Angel had her Christmas pageant at church Saturday night and 3 services on Sunday. The Professor, my mother and I made the Saturday night program, along with most of the LA's relatives from her mother's side -- as one of them once commented, when LA gets up on stage, the whole family shows up. I tried to get some pictures Saturday night, but the lighting was very difficult and everything moved fast. I went back to the early service Sunday morning, this time with my video camera, and was able to get some good video. I don't have any pictures from the performance, but here are the LA, Guppy and my mother right afterwards.

Sunday afternoon the Professor & I tried to meet Guppy, Storm & the LA to see Narnia, but it was sold out by the time we got there. Driving home, I realized I was exhausted and lay down to take a nap. The next thing I knew, the Professor was waking me to talk to some strange woman standing in the middle of my living room. It wasn't until she sat down next to me that I realized it was my daughter, Dolphin! Did I mention I was sleeping really hard? Dolphin had a problem and all I could really do was listen. I hate more than anything to see my kids hurting. I'm cautiously optimistic that it will resolve itself. Anyway, she stayed until pretty late, and then when I had just fallen asleep I got a phone call.

I have been baking, baking, baking, and giving away plates of cookies to my customers. Yesterday I literally emptied all the cookie jars into a box and sent it off to the factory. Now I have to bake all the cookies one more time. But I have to keep those factory people happy; they can make or break me. I am also frantically making one more stocking -- too long and complicated a story to go into. I would show you the neat thing I made for Dolphin, but just in case she has this link, I will wait until after Christmas.

I'm still not sure of the head count, but it looks like about 18 for Christmas dinner. That is actually a smallish number for us, but it still takes a lot of cooking. I also make these sort of meat pies called pasties (that's pahs-ties, not pays-ties!) every Christmas Eve -- again, a lot of work, but they taste so good and it makes the kids feel so loved. (As well it should!) But even with all the work, I LOVE Christmas. This year was especially nice because I had a lot of opportunities to buy presents for people who weren't going to have a Christmas otherwise -- and it is so much more satisfying to buy things than to write a check to a charity. As I told the Professor a while back, we do-gooders are so happy when we can actually do good!

Not that I think anyone will be reading blogs in the next few days, but I'll try to do one more post to show you how I make money trees. I hate writing checks to people, it's way too impersonal, so I have given money inside balloons, tucked into stuffed animals, as coins made into sculptures -- but the money tree seems to be everyone's favorite. Although the first time I made one Guppy's comment was "And you always told me money didn't grow on trees!"

Just in case I don't get back here until after Christmas, I hope everyone has a wonderful, joyous holiday.