Busy End to November

A week of vacation isn't much of a vacation this time (yet again). I took Monday-Wednesday off for a variety of reasons, but I didn't get to sit around a whole lot. Yes, a lot of it was my choice, but I really should have taken a couple naps!

Monday, I spent the day birthday and Christmas shopping with my mom. We've done this the last 3 years now, I think, and it's been fun. I got most everything I needed to finish off the gifts for this year, leaving a few things for Black Friday.

Tuesday and Wednesday invovled wrapping presents, doctor appts, and some house cleaning in preparation for the week's events. I guess those events actually had started last Sunday when we had Matt's Crown Financial class over for a dinner and their last class.

For Thanksgiving, we had our parents, Aunt Deb, and my grandma over for lunch. I'd picked up Apples to Apples for $10 on Wednesday, so we got in a nice game of it.

Friday, I left the house at 4:30 a.m. to start my shopping. I got a few things, but I hadn't seen a lot of deals I really NEEDED to take advantage of. Today, we had the kids birthday party, so we had my sister's family, our parents, and Aunt Deb all over. The kids are so excited for their new stuff. We've now got a couple Thomas train tracks set up in the basement and the kids have some new ornaments for their Christmas trees. I try to get them new ornaments each year. Usually they get them for their birthdays so they can put them on their own tree for Christmas.

I need to find a tradition of using their trees for something, but I'm not sure what that will be. They each get to open one gift on Christmas Eve (which is always a new pair of jammies). Maybe that will go under their trees... hmm.... I guess I better figure out where we're going to put their trees this year. We switched locations for our big tree, so I'm really not sure where I'm going to have them put them up!

Tomorrow, we'll probably head downtown after church. Jacob has to stuff the Build-a-Bear moose that he got, so we'll probably make a stop at the mall before heading to Science Central. I'm not sure what all we'll do, but I'm sure we'll be busy.

Quick update on Jacob....He's been doing better keeping the mask on. He even made it 50 minutes one night this week. We received his echocardiogram results on Friday - everything is fine. We're not sure what the doctor might have been hearing, but we'll take this answer and pray that it was something God handled. Time for me to start up Jacob's machine again and m maybe get a short snooze in. Good night!