Outside my window: Rain, rain, rain – sheets of rain on a gray, gloomy day.
Room to ramble: It’s the Week Before. And though my list was as long as my arm, my completion level was not over the weekend. We decorated, though, and that was fun…more fun because we waited. I must say, the Bah-Humbug Virus has not been as bad this year, and perhaps it’s, in part, because I’m enjoying Advent. Perhaps it also has something to do with a 38-year-old man in my life, who has been gently coaxing me out of Bah-Humbug Mode for, oh, eight years or so. Perhaps it also has to do with the oooos and ahhhhs of small people who helped with the decorating.
In thanksgiving: For small hands helping with the tree. For Santa hats that are too large. For unexpected word usage, like “reglier” (regular) and “familiar,” pronounced in a way I just can’t quite capture but which I want to remember.
Kitchen meanderings: Pork roast in the crock pot, two weeks of menus on the fridge, rumbling in my tummy. I was up at 2 AM with a wide! awake! babykins, and realized that I had a pork blade roast not a pork loin roast, and online I went, searching out how to prepare it. Lesson learned, though mistake will likely be made again: buying the meat on sale without knowing how to prepare it, letting it age in the freezer, and then forcing yourself to cook it by thawing it won’t miraculously make it palatable, but might allow you to see the blessing of the baby waking up (otherwise I would have forgotten to remember to look up said recipe/preparation!).
Nose inserted: Now that Hubby has finished it, I have custody of Brisingr back, and he expects me to finish it this week. I will, too, but probably only if I (a) can keep my eyes open later than 9:00 (long story there) and (b) get the mountains of wrapping done.
Folded hands, bowed head: For family. For patience and love. For those babies in utero and their mommies and daddies (and excited big cousins). For the grace to let go of the things I just won’t get done this week.
Around the house: Lights on in every room. Tree dark in playroom. Kids still snoozing…though not for much longer…
A favorite thing: The smell of a Christmas tree. Inside or outside, that piney smell during the month of December (and, really, in the middle of the summer too) takes me back to my very young days, and it especially makes me think of the Christmas when I got the My Little Pony castle and my little brother got his John Deere pedal tractor. Of course, then I start thinking of Christmases Past, and I can’t help but think of the year we decorated the buffalo head, years we spent at Grandma’s house, the year we moved, and the years when our family grew by leaps and blessings… But my favorite thing this week is the smell of a Christmas tree (if not the feel of the needles under my unsuspecting bare feet).
For the rest of the week: Wrapping and running and preparing.
Worth a thousand words:
(The backs of people’s heads and people holding babies and people near windows…I’m such a sucker for them all, especially when a camera is handy!)
