December 14-21

Two weeks ago, especially the second half of the week, was ridiculously busy.

You may recall that Steph and I started an Etsy shop.  Well, said Esty shop exploded in business over the last month, presumably because of the holiday.  We nearly doubled our total orders in the time from Thanksgiving until we went on vacation December 15.  Because of this, I had 13 sets of snapkins, 6 car roll-up travel maps, and 1 custom Pomeranian golf club cover to make.  I sewed and sewed and sewed, only taking breaks for all the other things that were happening in my life.

What other things?  Let's see...  The church had a cookie walk, for which I baked 32 dozen Spritz cookies and 40 dozen Austrian chocolate balls.  I also helped roll 50 dozen gingerbread men and 40 dozen rum balls.  The cookie walk took place on Saturday, December 13, so I was at church all morning arranging tables and selling cookies.  Then I had to leave for rehearsal because my concert was the same day.

Yes, the Lima Symphony Christmas Concert is the same day as the cookie walk.  A bit of poor planning on the part of the cookie walk, since I'm not the only member of our (rather small) parish that is in this concert.  That's the best day for it, though, so Elesha and I just leave the cookie walk early for rehearsal.  I had a rehearsal Friday night, another Saturday afternoon, and then a concert Saturday night.  All went well and I happily went to bed that night knowing that the only thing left to do was sew.

...Except that we didn't have enough cookies to cover all the preorders that were made.  Sunday afternoon and evening were spent spooning out 12 dozen lemon ricotta cookies and rolling approximately 700 buckeyes.  Monday was dipping buckeyes in chocolate and packaging preorders until they were finally done.  THEN back to the sewing.  ...With a brief hiatus Tuesday afternoon to babysit Carrie's three boys while she dropped off preorders at local businesses, because it's quicker to do all that running in and out without three carseat-dwellers in tow.  :)

In the midst of all this craziness, Jacque came down to surprise me for my birthday and stayed for a couple of days.  She and I chitchatted when she wasn't being required to dance or read or play hide-and-go-seek with her nieces.  She was instantly accepted by the girls as one of their own (although Gretchen had a change of heart for part of the second day) and Olivia gave her the tour of the house.  By the way, the "house" according to Olivia apparently consists only of the playroom.  Jacque painted Olivia's nails and watched Tangled with her, thus further cementing her favorable position in Olivia's eyes.  Gretchen spent the first lunchtime trying to convince Jacque that she was actually Billy and then, having finally accepted the fact that this was, in fact, Jacque, spent the rest of the visit saying, "Not Billy.  Jacque." and laughing to herself.

Bryan and the girls gave me Blue Moo for my birthday.  It's a compilation of Sandra Boynton songs, complete with pictures, lyrics, music, and a CD.  If you don't own it, you're missing out.  This CD has been the only thing playing in our car since I opened it a week ago and it is fabulous.  I'd list our favorite songs, but that's practically the whole album, so you should just check out the link.  Click on the picture of the cover to look inside.  You will not be disappointed.

Gretchen's most recent words: backpack, candle, Jacque, Justine, please, booger brain, ate well, candy, lunch, juice, grapes, wand, raisins.  Gretchen is one of those children who repeats every word she hears, so she says a lot of things once, but not all of them stick.  Olivia didn't repeat things this much, so I was beginning to think that the constant repetition was a bit of hyperbole used when stereotyping toddlers.  It's not.

A lesson learned: The best mode for taking pictures of toddlers is Sports mode.  The pictures don't try so hard to focus and generally come out less blurry.

A fun thing to do: Watch two 3-year-olds and a 5-year-old try to assemble Mousetrap.

Now we're at Bryan's parents' house for the holidays.  We'll be here until Christmas Day, when we travel up to Michigan to visit my parents for a few days.  Let the craziness begin!

A few pictures:

Gretchen gets bubble jewelry:

The Christmas tree.  Can you spot the section that was decorated by a three-year-old?

When the previous owners leave obnoxiously huge nails in the walls, use them to hang stockings!