December 11, 2006

A Restful Sabbath, A Good School Day

Saturday was super busy here at my house. I had a Christmas calendar class for my stamping customers, and as it was the first time I had done this as a class (I've given them as gifts for years now), I learned a LOT about what kind of time frame I should give people for stamping calendars...particularly when they choose to stamp 2 or 3! However, it was a lot of fun, and the ladies seemed to enjoy and appreciate their finished products. Saturday evening I spent some time prepping for the stamping workshop I'm doing tonight--the last business event of 2006 for me!

So, I decided early on that Sunday would be a day of REST! After church and dinner we watched a bit of football (sigh...the Broncos are NOT looking good this year) while working on a Las Vegas puzzle that Joel and Sarah had given to Ted. We finished the puzzle and decided to start a Christmas puzzle, which looks to be much too difficult for the kids, but they seem interested in working at it sporadically at least. So I have left it up on one of my stamp tables, now that I don't need them for any classes for quite awhile.

We also made fudge, a family Christmas tradition. It turned out very yummy, if Charis and I do say so ourselves! She was the one to help me make it, so we got to sample and lick the spoons. :-) We spent time reading more in our current read-aloud book (Little House on the Prairie) and just enjoyed being together as a family.

This morning we actually did do school, though I ended up not starting Charis on a new math lesson. We might tomorrow...I don't want her to forget all the subtraction she's been doing so well with! But with our Polar Express trip last week (I'll blog about that next time), we had a very short school week and didn't do math then, either. We started out with our daily advent calendar activity. Then Charis copied the words to "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" because she wanted to learn the song, so we counted that as handwriting for the day. Then she copied her new spelling words--I picked out some common Christmas words for this week--and both she and Tobin read aloud to me. Tobin completed lesson 98 in his 100 Easy Lessons book, so we are almost finished with that for the second time! Charis is reading aloud Pathway Readers to me for her reading time. I know she has already stolen them all away and read them to herself in her room, but I figure it's good practice, and she doesn't seem to mind reading them again to me. She and Tobin and I all cuddled on the couch while she and I took turns reading. We also read more in Little House on the Prairie and are nearly finished with the book now.

By then it was close to lunch time, but not close enough to start eating, so we began wrapping presents. Hooray! I wanted to get our packages prepared to mail to family members when I go out running errands on Wednesday, and I thought I'd have to do all the prep tomorrow. But as it turned out, I have wrapped ALL of the presents. I THINK we're done shopping, just about, but we do need to check on one other thing. I just have to finish stuffing and addressing the boxes, and they'll be ready to go out! Woohoo! Charis was a great helper with the tape this year, and the boys helped by staying out of the way and playing pirate. :-)

After lunch time we started another, slightly easier Christmas puzzle, though the boys lost interest and quickly began driving Charis and me nuts. I suggested they go bounce on the trampoline, and pretty soon I was the only one left in the house! Oh, well...I got more presents wrapped!

So, all in all, it's been a good couple of days. I'm just about on track with Christmas activities; I wrote a draft of our Christmas letter today and will make copies of that when I'm out on Wednesday. I'm not finished stamping Christmas cards yet, but hopefully I'll do that this weekend and get the cards ready to mail out the week before Christmas Day. Tomorrow is Peanut Butter Balls day--yum! And maybe I'll get a few cards stamped...who knows?! I'm enjoying a more relaxed pace with our schooling, and the kids are eating up the joy of the holidays (both literally and figuratively!)

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