Post-Christmas

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your families. I'll tell you right now, nothing sucks more than getting the flu on Christmas day. All that built up anticipation for turkey, stuffing and pie, and then phfft. Can't stomach a forkful. What a disappointment.

But we have Take Two (a.k.a. Christmas with my family) tomorrow and so far not a stomach pain to be felt. Please, oh please let me enjoy a turkey dinner.

Right now, it's 1:55 a.m. and I just finished planning music for Sunday. This is the first moment this week I have had the time to sit and plan out service. I am running on a serious sleep deficit. I was able to finally fall asleep around 3:30 a.m. this morning, thanks to a cranky baby. The night, or should I say morning, before was 4:00 a.m. I'm TIRED! And we have Christmas with my family tomorrow which means I have to be up early to get ready, load the gifts and kids in the car and get to my parent's by 9:00 a.m. I'm just glad they only live across town.

I don't think I'm making much sense right now and I've dosed off twice at the computer. I'm shutting down and am going to try and catch some rest before the mayhem of tomorrow.

I want to take a minute right now to thank God for coffee. Seriously, I don't want to know where I would be without it. How crazy do you have to get before they put you in a padded room? And would it really be so bad? Your meals brought to you, unlimited time to SLEEP, coffee all day. There's pills to wake you up, put you to sleep, pick you up, or calm you down. Actually, that sounds like a real nice vacation. Where do I sign up?

********** IMPORTANT NEWS **********

LASR is holding a contest for Best Romance Book of 2007!

Read any great romance books this year? Have your say!

Head over to LASR's contest page and nominate your favorites.

Contest nominations end December 26.

Voting will run from January 1-31, 2008.

(New blog posts below)

Merry Christmas!

May you all have a wonderful holiday season, filled with family, friends and laughter as you celebrate the birth of the Savior. I pray you discover anew the love, peace, joy and hope that He came to bring. May your home be blessed and may you feel the miracle of Christmas filling your heart.

Check out this video. It's one of the best renditions of "Winter Wonderland" that I've ever heard. And it's LIVE! Absolutely amazing! This might be my favorite Christmas song this year. Unfortunately it's not on any of his albums. Yet.

The Things We Do

I just poked my husband's shoulder. "Do you think I'm crazy?" Dangerous question.

His response was a less than intelligent, "hrmphs."

"Do you think I'm crazy?"

"Hmm? Um-um."

"Would you think I'm crazy if I told you I just put a pizza in the oven?"

"Whah? Yes."

That's right. It's midnight and I just popped a pizza in the oven.

I was busy making my son's lunch when I had, what I like to call, a Good Mom Moment.

My boys have a food sensitivity to gluten which means my kindergartner can't take sandwiches like other kids his age. Usually I fill his lunch with some type of meat (tuna, chicken) and cheese and crackers along with other goodies.

For some reason I was struck with that sense of motherly awe. You know, the one that makes you well up with emotion and think, I would do anything for this child of mine. I would give my life for him. And since there's no impending doom to rescue him from, I did the next best thing. I made him pizza. At midnight.

No, I did not make my own crust. You can buy these gluten-free ones from the local health food store for an exorbitant price. I had one sitting in my freezer. I may be crazy, but I'm not that crazy.

So now I'm feeling warm and fuzzy and like a pretty darned good mother, if I do say so myself.

Hang on - Whew! Got busy typing and nearly burnt the pizza.

So now I'll be up until 1:00 a.m. waiting for it to cool. But that's okay. His smile will be worth the lost hours of sleep.

Trees

Reasons to get a real Christmas tree:

1. You won't have to crawl under the stairs to dig out the tree that somehow got buried under a tarp, a stroller, a cooler and a bag of old clothes.

2. You won't have to clean up shards of glass from an old, burnt out light that fell and shattered during the digging.

3. You won't spend precious time "fluffing" the tree branches till they look just right.

4. You won't stab your hand on the hidden wire poking out of the branches.

5. You won't have to light a pine-scented candle to get that woodsy, Christmas tree smell.

6. When the Christmas season is over, you won't have to flatten all the branches, disassemble the tree, package it, and crawl under the stairs to store it for another year.

Regret

The tears are just under the surface. I'm regretting yesterday's purge and fighting the urge to rush downstairs, dive into the piles and clutch the books to my breast. I'm trying to assure myself it was a good decision, a necessary evil. I'm not convinced. There's this tightness around my chest and it feels like a vice has squeezed all the breath from my body.

I can't think about this.

Moving on. Some of the sweetest words I hear all day are, "Mom, I love you a million, billion, billion, million, trillion, willion, gazillion, tillion, billion, million, billion, a lot."

Also, my son used this one. "Mom, I'll make all your wishes come true." Little does he know that he and his brothers surpassed all my dreams long ago.

My husband rented the Spiderman Wii game on Tuesday. The kids have been in Little Boy Heaven for the past two days. He also brought home a movie about the Justice League. It goes without saying that my house has been filled with the sounds of battle, good vs. evil, for the past couple of days. Not that that's any different from a regular day. I just get it in stereo now, blasting through the floor and filling the whole house. Yipee!

And now I have to go set up the Wii. After all, little boys' patience is only so big.

Oh What a Glorious Feeling!

I have been struggling with an overflow of books. Normally this isn't a bad thing, but I have struggled with getting rid of books, any book, whether good or bad, interesting or boring. I have found myself physically incapable of purging my collection. The thought alone was enough to give me hives and set off a full-blown panic attack. Get rid of books? You must be CRAZY!

But like the crazy spinster with 100 cats, things had to change. It seemed that overnight piles of books had spawned more piles and things were getting out of control. Now I'll admit that, like the cat woman, I could be quite content in my insanity if left alone. But my family keeps shining the light on my 'problem', bringing clarity where I'd prefer a little darkness.

So for the past month I have been psyching myself up, trying to prepare myself for the inevitable day when I would weed out my collection. That day has come!

I cleaned my shelves. I actually took books off with the intention of giving them away, either to family, friends or the church. Yup, I'm thinning out my collection. Some of my favorite authors are releasing books in January and I decided I'd rather have some space to display the GREATS than clutter up my shelves with the OKAYS. And you know what? It actually feels kinda good. 'Course it could be I'm consoling myself with the knowledge that I have a book order on its way from Amazon, but we won't go there.

And you know what else? I got to spend three glorious hours surrounded by towering stacks of books as I sorted, cleaned, organized and alphabetized. The smell of paper and ink; the feel of holding great literature in my hands. Now I ask, is there anything better than that? It's an adrenaline rush for the bookish and let me tell you, I'm flying high!