Day 22: Final Touches

The transition to Christmas began in earnest today. We put final touches on our work and closed up shop for a needed four day break. Brent's even submitted his grades so the semester is also at a close. We finished buying gifts and began final preperations. We visited these huge nutcrackers outside a local store while checking the last items off our list. My recipes for the weekend have been selected; the crafty presents are complete. The wrapping is almost done and nearly all 100 of the Christmas cards are on their way, at last.

An elf (aka Granddaddy) even stopped by with previews of coming attractions. We made delicious Chocolate Spice cookies and Chocolate Peppermint candy in the evening, after an afternoon of telecommuting with Uncle Able. (It was pretty fun, if distracting, to have a telecommuting partner). M continues to be adorable, as you can see, while B is already deep into loving his first Christmas present, having played the Lego Star Wars game during much of these preparations.

I feel strangely ready for the next phase that begins on Thursday. Welcome Christmas. We are ready and so very excited!

Crafting Note: There will be an extra page for this day. Side one will be a collage of the things we made/ did towards preparing for Christmas today, but I'm not sharing it here just now as it features some presents we made that I would prefer be a surprise. The backside will be a list of our planned activities over the next four days. I'll share it later so you can marvel at the list, but am keeping it back rather than advertise my whereabouts to the internet. My prints of days 8-17 arrived so there should be more complete pages coming if I have a spare moment in all the Christmas wonder.