Moving and Christmasing.

Everyone should try to move and buy a home during the busiest time of year! It's exhilarating!

To be honest, it's really stressful, but it's also all good stuff. So I feel blessed to do it.

While I'm being honest, a few years ago, I fell out of love with Christmas. I mean, I still loved all of the spiritual aspects of Christmas. I loved reading about the nativity and the service and all that. But I was pregnant with Gwen and SO SICK, and all of the merry and cheer and sales and annoying pop versions of my favorite Christmas songs just got on my nerves! And it took me awhile to recover from it.

This year, I'm enjoying Christmas. Our stake hosts a community nativity display event every year, and even though I was stressed about playing four piano solos and accompanying several others, I really enjoyed it. I felt the Christmas cheer I used to feel and have not felt in prior years. It really is a great time of year.

My mom sent the family a nativity set, and it's quickly become the girls' nativity set. It's durable and they love it.

And June made me this note:

I hope you have a great day, lucky! HAHA.

The Light the World campaign is awesome, and even though I haven't been keeping up with the prompts every single day, I'm still benefiting from the ones I get to. And my friend Kim wrote about June for one of the days, and that touched my ice cold heart and melted it a little.

And I've started wrapping presents. Yay me!

One year, I want to go all out and make them pretty, but this year I'm settling for them getting done. Done is better than perfect.

And my beautiful, wonderful Aunt Marie offered to watch the kids in her Manhattan apartment while Dan and I went to the temple to do sealings and initiatories. 

My kids loved looking around the lobby of Marie's apartment. Dan asked me if the lobby reminded me of our first apartment. Haha, nope!

Gwen in her city, NYC. I totally think Gwen will live there as an adult. She loves it.

Dan distracting the kids with this luggage cart. It was more entertaining than it should have been.

This was a great part of the day. Using the Giving Machine. Choosing between buying a baby crib, a menstrual hygiene kit, a sheep, a well, a baby resuscitation kit--everything gripped at us. At the end, we paid for 100 polio vaccinations. With tears in our eyes. I love the giving machines!

AND we went out to lunch. Just Dan and me. It was awesome. So what if we spent the whole lunch talking about our calendar and other boring chores. We were together, and we could hear each other the whole conversation. Lovely.

And the kids also playing in the parking garage. Kids will play anywhere they can.

Church yesterday.

Cutting up candy bars to put into fudge. And then realizing I didn't have a crucial ingredient for fudge. Yay me.

I recognize that this post is pretty lame, but it's done. Sometimes done is better than perfect.

The end.