December Insanity

I remember being a kid and hearing all the adults around me talking about how busy the month of December was. It was something that I could not fathom with my busy schedule of playing, eating, going to school, more playing, staring longingly at each box under the tree wishing it were for me (since my dad didn't put names on anything to keep the mystery alive), and then some more playing. Each year it seems life gets a little bit crazier at Christmastime. 

The funny thing about feeling crazy this year is that we are keeping Christmas really simple. The girls are both with other parents for the holiday so we're keeping gifts at a minimum for them (since they will have already received about a billion) and forgoing them altogether for each other. Last year I made 17 batches of fresh pasta as neighbor gifts and this year I confess I haven't done anything. I expected that this would make life feel easygoing and carefree, but it hasn't. 

The past couple weeks have been a blur. We'll just focus on the past 24 hours. 

Last night was the Christmas party at church. I ended up *unofficially* on the activities committee for the event and have been pretty busy putting together a newspaper, helping to organize the food, set up, serve, clean up, take the kids' Santa pictures, and try to maintain the general sanity of other committee members. It's over. It was successful. I can breathe now. 

This morning Aeryn and I attended a cookie contest and exchange that was pretty much the most fun thing I've ever seen, as far as cookies exchanges go. There was a crown for the "cookie queen" as determined by taste testing and anonymous voting. Add lots of chocolate, really kind people, and spontaneous outbursts of singing "we are the champions" and it was a complete blast. 

Meanwhile, Jim was running 14 miles in the cold and mud with a few of our other runner friends. In his words, "this was the hardest race I've ever done" because it was extremely muddy, steep in places, and just downright hard. He's pretty sore and tired now, but I'm happy he did it. As for why there was a big stuffed gorilla at the finish line, I'm still not sure. 

This was followed by 4 loads of laundry, grocery shopping, and now finally life calming down a little bit. I'm ready for a breather.