How do we spend the days and weeks before Christmas arrives?

Well, I'd like to say that we light a fire every night, kick our feet up in front of the fire, grab a good book or have a nice conversation, and totally relax in anticipation of the big day.

But then, of course, I'd be lying.

I'd be doing a great disservice to all of the busy, busy, busyness we've experienced in the last week or so (which is why I, sadly, have failed to put a post here for an entire week) if I said we had done anything as relaxing as reading a book or kicking our feet up.

Of course, there will be time for all of that soon enough (more sooner than later, I hope!), but for now we have had a lot of fun activities in preparation for Christmas. We've had family activities, and church activities, and mostly school activities.

So here, then, is a short recap of our activities of late.

We've, first of all, gone on a field trip (Sydney's first ever, which was very exciting) and learned about holiday celebrations around the world...

Then we enjoyed our community's annual Christmas parade. For the first time in forever, McKenna wasn't in the parade (she marches with the band, and serious sleet and rain were in the forecast, so they didn't want to risk the instruments' well-being). So, we (and she) enjoyed bundling up as much as possible and watching such small-town-parade sights as beauty queens, giant cows, trucks-turned-Rudolph, and Santa Claus...

We celebrated the holidays with Delaney's softball team...

And then, we took a little bit of a break from Christmas so we could all focus (i.e., obssess over) Alabama running back Mark Ingram's quest to win the Heisman Trophy (the first-ever for Bama, if you can believe it).

We'd already planned to go to the Alabama vs. Purdue basketball game, so we got dressed,

stopped to watch the Heisman announcement on the concourse televisions, and then celebrated wildly with all of the Bama fans there. It was so exciting to see Mark win, and what a great way to see it...

They showed his acceptance speech at halftime, and we all texted everyone the news...

We did decide to watch a little bit of basketball, and cheer on our favorite team...

(These Purdue fans were really sad while we were ahead of them. Of course, they became happy at the end when they pulled out a victory!)

We also enjoyed a Christmas party with our church's youth, where McKenna's Dirty Santa gift made the rounds until it was finally safe and won (it was the best Dirty Santa gift of the night, if I do say so myself--a singing and dancing Christmas tree hat!)...

We attended a couple of Christmas peformances, including the awesome one put on by McKenna's high school band...

and Delaney's middle school drama team (the play was called "a Groundhog in a Pear Tree" and featured the 12 Days of Christmas on strike...

We watched our very favorite Christmas movie of all--It's a Wonderful Life--at the most beautiful movie theatre anywhere! The Alabama Theatre is a gorgeous, restored theatre from the 2os and there's no better place to enjoy George Bailey, and Mary, and Clarence (and sing "Buffalo Gals" along with the organ)...

We ended the week with a super fun Christmas party for Sydney's class...


And imagine? This list of activities doesn't even include...

* Shopping for gifts (then shopping some more, and shopping some more)

* Making a scrapbook for McKenna's color guard sponsor

* Making cupcakes for various events for the girls

* Going to Gary's Christmas lunch at work

* Decorating the trees and house (inside, not out! I'm not that brave)

* Shopping some more

The holiday season is always so busy, but the good news this year is that it doesn't feel overwhelming. I don't feel hectic as I have in the past, and I'm feeling more joy in the midst of it all (I'm guessing that has something to do with age; do you agree?).

I hope that all of you are having a wonderful time in preparation of next week. I'd love to hear what is going on with you!

(Please forgive the weird spacing in this post. There are extra spaces in some places, and then the paragraphs are bunched together in others. That really bothers me, but I cannot figure out how to fix it!)