As stated inside the Dove chocolate foil wrapper: "Life without chocolate is too terrible to contemplate." Very true indeed.

The hours are ticking away until the day when all things worked for & shopped for the past month will be ripped into and added to our collections of stuff. This time next week it will be all over with, and my poor tree will be kicked to the curb. How sad is that? But in the meantime, I'm going to remain excited about it. Yeah, I'm a grownup now, with kids of my own, but I still have a child-like heart when it comes to Christmas. I'm still the first person awake on Christmas morning and I wake up everyone else. I'm not just excited for me, but I'm also excited for my kids. The pure glow of happiness and excitement on their faces is just priceless. I get so happy for them, that a tear comes to my eye just thinking about it. Okay, enough of the mush for now, lol.

On Christmas Eve, we actually have no plans for once in our lives and so the tentative "plan" is to just have time to ourselves, just me, Michael, and the kiddies. We might sing some Christmas songs, and I would like for us to start the tradition of reading the REAL Christmas Story found in Luke 2. It's so EASY to forget what Christmas is REALLY about. Yes, the presents, decorations, food, family gatherings, it's all wonderful, but the most wonderful gift of ALL is God's gift to the world...his Son, Jesus, our Saviour. And I want to start the tradition of reading the Christmas Story while the kids are little, every Christmas Eve.

Michael has been playing Santa Claus and buying me all sorts of stuff. No telling WHAT he has up his sleeve! We still have to play "Santa's Workshop" and put together Travis' and Jacob's "big" present. They are still in the garage, in boxes, and we have NO CLUE when we're going to do it. Jacob's shouldn't be so hard, and it'll be easy to hide once it's put together. But Travis'...Michael thinks once it's put together, it can't be moved. But once again, there's no daylight hours when he gets home at night, so there's no way of putting it together in the garage. It's way too dark in there, even when the light actually works in there. I've about decided I'm just going to have to make Travis take a nap, and hope he stays asleep long enough for me to attempt to put it together MYSELF. How hard could it really be? I've put together a baby swing, a stroller, a toy box, various toys. I can read simple directions. I have tools. The only problem I run into sometimes is not having enough "man strength" to snap or push something into place or something, and that's when I need Michael. Seriously, if we try to assemble something TOGETHER, we get mad at each other and I have to do it myself anyway. I just don't work well with others. I have my own system of doing things and get aggravated when anyone helping with the job tries to do things differently. I received that curse from my Dad, lol.

On top of THAT, I still have a couple things to wrap and still have to find my Dad SOMETHING! Oh yeah, and did I mention we're going out of town TOMORROW NIGHT?!?!?! Like, my laundry pile is chest high and my house is upside down from having company over TWICE this weekend. Friday night, our Pastor and his wife and two kids came over for dinner...I made fried chicken...it turned out awesome. And then Sunday night after church, our friends Angie and Richard and their two kids came over. I had put on a pot of chili in the crock pot before we left for evening church, so it was good and hot and spicy when they got here. So needless to say, this morning I had a pile of dishes, too. And Travis' room is trashed from all the kids. I'm really too busy to be sitting here blogging, but I figured I needed to update because Lord only knows when I'll get back on here! Tomorrow I have to have everything packed when Michael gets home from work so we can drop off the kids at his Mom's and hit the road to Mobile, Alabama. Then we'll be back home sometime Thursday afternoon, and then the next day is Christmas Eve. I feel like Santa! So much to do, so many places to go, not enough time!!!!!

Oh and one more tidbit I wanted to add before I go, Jacob can play peek-a-boo now. He covers his eyes with both his hands, and I say "Where's Jacob?" and he throws his hands up in the air and I say "There he is!" and he just dies laughing! It's too sweet! He has such a bubbling personality, and he's learning how to gang up on his older brother :-)

Well, if I don't blog again before Christmas, MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL and STAY SAFE!!!