Thanksgiving to Christmas

I cannot decide if this year went by fast or slow. Time is so relative, you know? The days drag and the weeks fly. I also wonder when it is I will get my life in order. A better schedule, more planned activities, things going exactly the way that I want them to. On the other hand, I love it that I can just do what I want. I can be so flexible and I REALLY enjoy that! I guess it's time for my year end review...to see how I have done this year, so I am in a pondering mood:)

Here's some things that we have done lately.

• We had Thanksgiving with the Jones side of the family. What an awesome thing. There were 30 of us...30! What a great thing to have all that family so close together. I LOVE all of my in-laws and the kids always have SO MUCH FUN with the cousins. What a treat for us. And of course, the food was fabulous. I only gained a pound that week..it could have been worse:)
• We toured the local food bank last week for school. What a cool thing. The kids enjoyed it, but I think I always get WAY more out of field trips then they do. I could ask a million questions and stay for hours...but then the kids' eyes glaze over and someone eventually starts screaming and we have to go:) But it was cool.
• I took all 4 kids to the Fabulous Friday homeschool book club this week. The book club was great. Taking all 4 kids was not. Seth managed to color all over himself, the floor and another young child with marker. He and Sam opened and closed every cabinet door repeatedly while taking things out and mouthing them. The kids made this cool snow (to go with the book) and Levi accidently dumped his all over the floor. As I was cleaning that up, Seth escaped out of the room and headed for the dreaded aisles of books...the place where you cannot ever find a 3 foot child. *sigh* Someday, all of my children will sit quietly and listen and obey and....*sigh*
• After that, I decided to take advantage of the free babysitting at the YMCA and work off some of my stress. That was GREAT! I do love the Y these days. Especially the free babysitting:)
• I went after Thanksgiving Day shopping. I went alone (which is fairly lame) but it was fun anyway. Fun to watch people and to laugh at all of us that are up at 4am for sales. Good times! I didn't get everything I wanted, but I got a lot!
• The Terminix guy has become a household name around here. He (they, really) have taken care of us and for that I am SO grateful. I would rather not share my house with anyone, uh...anything else!
• George and I have watched a few fun movies lately. We watched Monsters vs. Aliens with the kids (so I didn't really see that one), The Proposal (which had a yucky scene that we skipped), Star Trek (I really liked it!), The Notebook ( not as good as the book), and tonight, it was Passengers (this was a cool movie!!). We also saw this movie called Primer. After we watched it, we had no idea what we had just seen, so we got online to find out what it was all about and pretty much no one had any idea. It was about time-travel but as to how the storyline went, I got nothing. It was fun anyway!
• On the topic of movies, I went to see New Moon with a group of my Twihard friends. That was a blast. Don't know if I loved the movie or not, but had a great time!

This has been my life lately. We, of course, are doing school and have some fun things planned for the next couple of weeks. And then I plan to get a good chunk of the rest of the year planned:)

I feel very relaxed this Christmas season. It's a nice feeling, but I wonder if I am forgetting something...or if Christmas is really just closer than I think it is. I always feel such a let-down after Christmas, so I really want this time to go slow. The less busy I am, the more I can enjoy it, right? I don't think I will do piles of baking this year because of my losing weight goals. Presents are almost done. No big family get-togethers until New Years for the Jones' and I don't know about the Lyon side yet...only one brother close enough to get together with. I hope we can work something out to see them! I hope all of you enjoy this time to be with family and celebrate the birth of our Savior.