Happy Christmas!

Everything I ever wanted. So blessed to be loved by my Boy and to get to love those knuckleheads of ours. I'm a happy, grateful girl. Happy Christmas, friends!

Nothing.

Know what I accomplished yesterday?
Nothing.
Okay, that's a little lie--I did clean up my a little happy corner and get that organized.
And we wrapped all of our gifts.
And, okay, I swept the floors last night before bed.

But I also took a nap...maybe 2...yesterday.
And I relaxed.
And I did NOTHING.

It was pretty awesome.

I know how I work, I can't do that very much or I'll go stir-crazy.
But after a long season of too much, nothing felt just about right.

Know what I wish for YOU today, friend?

NOTHING.

That's right--I wish you a whole lotta nothing after church today.

Enjoy.

Blessed

Today is my birthday.

I feel blessed every day.  I feel loved every day.  But today, the people in my life are working harder than ever to show me and tell me.

That's pretty cool.

I love you all.


And the Boy I love?  He commissioned this charm for me, to commemorate the new addition to our family this year.

I am blessed beyond measure to be loved by someone who would do something that wonderful and thoughtful for me.

I'd say I have no words, but I just spit out a few to try to explain how I feel.  I'm so, so grateful, today and every day.

My cup runneth over.

Quiet Time

I started this post two days ago...but haven't sat down long enough to finish it.

I worked in Houston on Monday after a busy weekend, so it felt like my week REALLY started on Tuesday.

I was running in circles, y'all.

Too much to do, not enough time to do it.

You've been there, I know.

So, I took the kids to school and my plan was to come home and get organized.  So far that morning I wasn't having any luck--I couldn't get organized in my head.  My house?  Forget about it.

I had a bit of a headache, so I thought, more coffee--that's what I need when I get home.


And then I remembered Brain Gym 101--and thought, the headache is probably telling me I need hydration, not caffeine dehydration.

So, I had some water.  The Sonic ice helps it go down, don't judge.



Still wasn't feeling quite myself.  Headache just lingered.  I remembered I hadn't had time to eat breakfast, so I had a couple of muffins.  And yes, I know I should have had protein--have I mentioned the stress eating happening around here?  It ain't pretty, y'all.


Still wasn't feeling quite right, and by now I was frus. trated.  My morning to get caught up?  It was flying by at an alarming rate.

Maybe, I thought, I just needed to get the house in order.  Then I could concentrate.

So I started on laundry.  I still hadn't put away last week's clean laundry.  The laundry room overfloweth.


I'm more than a little ashamed to tell you that it took me about an hour and a half to figure out what was missing from my busy, crazy day.

And yep, this did the trick.  I sheepishly texted a pic of one of the devotions (Monday's devotion I hadn't read before I went to work, was playing 2 day catch up on Tuesday) to my Boy...perhaps if I HAD taken time for quiet time first thing in the morning instead of hitting the floor running I could have prevented an argument between us.  Ahem.

Point, God.


Friends, just a reminder:  there's always time for quiet time.  God's there even in the busy, crazy time, don't get me wrong...but I feel better when I make time to just sit down with Him.  And you know what?  I suspect my family feels better when I've had my quiet time, too.  :)

Oh, Christmas Tree

So, the plan this year was to buy our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving since we were actually home (with no plans!).  But...then we chickened out.  That's a whole lotta weeks to have a live tree in our home, and our house is so small that 4 weeks of decorations just about drive me nuts...I love, love decorating for Christmas, but I also love, love taking it all down in January and having just a basic, clean house for a while.  :)

We made time this past weekend to decorate our tree, so off we went Thursday night to buy our tree.  That way we could get straight to the decorating this weekend.

Or...not.  But man, we did have a great weekend!

So, the new plan was to decorate the tree Monday night.  Last night.  Only, one of us commuted to Houston for work and got stuck in CRAZY traffic coming home.  So maybe we got a later start than we planned.  Daddyboy and I just looked at each other and agreed, it was TIME to get the tree up--the kids could stay up late one night.   :)

My favorite part of decorating the tree is opening the boxes and telling the kids the story behind each ornament...and remembering.

Each year we give our kids a Hallmark ornament for Christmas.  Whether they like it or not (and we hope they love it!), when they get married they'll already have a lifetime of ornaments that tell their story, ready for their trees.

When I was 9 (in 1983 if you must know), my Grandma Weseloh started the tradition of buying ornaments for all of us grandkids, which is where it started for us.  When she was unable to continue the tradition, Mom and Dad started buying ornaments for us.  So I have almost 30 years of ornaments that tell my story on our family tree., along with a few really early ones.  This is the ornament that started it all.  She's broken now, and out of rotation, but this year I had Kayci put her on our dresser so I could enjoy her again.  Man, I miss my Grandma.

Our tree is perfectly imperfect, as one of my favorite bloggers would say.  In addition to our bought ornaments, there are tons of kid-made ornaments.  It was fun last night looking at their 1-year old ornaments and comparing the size of their hands then and now.  Oh, how time flies, y'all.  
Each year we have our jobs:  Daddyboy puts on the lights (NOT my favorite!), and I sit on the floor and open ornaments and hand them to the kids, telling them the story of each one.  Then Daddyboy helps them place the ornaments on the tree (unless it's an unbreakable one, then we just let them have at it).


It's too early to go out there and take a picture, but I got a good laugh last night...last year was the first year Bubby was big enough to help with real ornaments.  Yeah.  I'm thinking we were a year early--at least 2 of our Hallmark ornaments are glued together with notes "Noble dropped, 2011."  But you know, being THAT KID is part of his story.  Someday his wife's going to get a big kick out of it!

It's been a little tough for Bitty to share the job of putting the angel on the tree--after all, it's been her job for YEARS.  Last year Daddyboy let both kids put the angel on, and he did it again this year.  I'm thinking we've spent enough on his back...next year we'll flip for it.  :)


And that's it.  It still needs a little garland for a finishing touch, but that's our story.  It's the kind of tree one either loves or hates.  But to me, a fir tree dressed with our story is a Christmas tradition.


Oh, Christmas tree.  You were a long time coming this year, but man, we're glad you're here.

I used to overload December with activities and too many traditions to count, but last year and this year we've kind of toned it down.  I realized I was focusing too much on the DOING and not enough on the BEING.  So this year, I'm not sure what we'll do.  Since it's December 4th, guess I better figure it out.  I know the kids are excited about the Advent calendar, so looks like I'll be working on that today.  Our Elf on the Shelf has been visiting, of course, but she's JUST an elf, not one of those mischievous ones.

a little happy update-from Saturday

Friday I had to go to work (you know, my real job!), but I was happy to take a full mail bag with me.  If you missed the facebook post, this bag contained:

18 tees

3 onesies

15 notecards

and, of course, a whole lotta happy thoughts!

I still have a few orders to fill this coming week, and my goal is to find better balance than I had with the first batch of Christmas orders.  :)  There were too many times when I was working while the kids were outside playing or watching TV (judge me, fine)...I've worked too hard over the years to balance work and family so that my kids' time is protected, and I must figure out a way to keep a little happy contained, for lack of a better word.  I don't think it's that I have too many orders (although the number of orders have been a very surprising blessing!), as much as that until this week I didn't have a system worked out for working.  Tomorrow I'll show y'all my happy place (what my Boy calls the corner where I have my stuff).  It makes me happy, especially when it's cleaned up between jobs!  

That reminds me...I need to order some vinyl.  Now that's a good problem to have!

Wonderful Weekend

We had a wonderful weekend.
I don't know that I "accomplished" anything.
The weekend was so wonderful and each day felt like it was several days...nothing was rushed.  There was time to enjoy each part of each day.
We enjoyed fellowship with some pretty amazing people, friends and family alike.
How often do I head into Monday morning thinking, man, that was a WONDERFUL weekend!  I'm ready and refreshed for this week?
So I'm celebrating, friends.
With a trip in to work, but still, celebrating.  :)

Have a great week.  No, have an AMAZING week!  My prayer for you this week is that you really SEE the blessings so abundant in your life.  And what you see that doesn't bless you or your loved ones, I pray that you & God can come up with a plan to take care of those.  Maybe you just need to talk to a mentor.  Maybe you need to take a few minutes and clean up one of your piles.  Maybe you need to sit down and apologize to your spouse or your child for what you said yesterday.  My prayer?  That those things don't go undone.

And here's my prayer request, as I am making personal and professional plans for the next year:  please pray for discernment and wisdom and vision, and make me obedient to His will and not MY plan.

Blessings to you on this wonderful Monday morning, friends.

Now, if I were a betting woman, I'd bank on the irony of me making statements like that BEFORE my kids are up.  This wonderful Monday morning might go all wonky here in a few minutes...but I'm going to hold on to the feeling of rest and encouragement from our wonderful weekend.  And I'm going to enjoy my commute today, with all that time to think and just BE.

:)