The tension in my back between my shoulder blades tells me that it's "beginning to look a lot like Christmas."  Don't get me wrong, it's my favorite time of year and the season wouldn't feel like Christmas if we weren't busy attending parties, making crafts and baked yummy things to give away, sending out Christmas cards, decorating, buying presents, etc.  Add that my husband is in the middle of finals and 2 of my children keep sneaking into our bed at night (2yo WITH his plastic toy rocket and metal cars that he seems to purposely park under my neck) and I have the tension in my back that even shelling out the bucks for a massage might not even help (though it might be worth it to try!). 

We had a wonderful but exhausting week last week.  Girl7 became Girl8 at the end of November.  We celebrated her birthday with a girls' trip to the American Girl store on Monday.  My sister came down from Northern California and the 3 of us had a great time together.  We got Kirsten's hair done, searched the whole store from top to bottom, purchased a couple of new outfits (thank you Aunt Kelly and Grandma!) and went out to lunch at the Cheesecake factory.  Then we went shopping for a couple of dresses for her to wear to church.  She relished all the attention on her and the Happy Birthdays she continued to get from the employees in the store as well as getting to hang out with the "ladies" all by herself.  I can't believe that she's 8!  I came near tears as I was going through a bookstore catalog and realized that she is now in the 8-12 "tween" pages.  Wow!  The time is going so fast. 

I was lamenting the other day about how much I had hoped to have taught her by age 8 and how I am "failing" by my own standards.  I was questioning why God hadn't taught me the things He's teaching me now when she was younger sto that I would have done things differently and we all could have reaped the benefits.  As I studied my Bible Study Fellowship homework that day, it addressed me specifically.  It talked about how you might grieve as you look over your life for the "wasted years", time when you didn't serve as you should or didn't know what you know now.  But then it reminded me of the passage from Joel 2:25-27 that God promised Israel that He would "repay you for the years the locusts have eaten."  I forget so easily that God is in control of everything - that He knew when I would learn things and when I was ready to hear and go deeper in my walk with Him and that all things are done in His timing.  There are no surprises with Him.  And He is faithful.  As I do what I know to do, put my trust in Him, He will help me to be the mother that my children need right now, right where they are at.  What a great God we serve!

We had BSF on Tuesday, Awana on Wednesday.  Then on Thursday, we attended the annual Seminary Christmas chapel in the morning(always a treat to worship with the other seminary families and eat lots of cookies!).  In the afternoon the same day, we had the last homeschool Sports Clinic of '07 including a pizza party in the afternoon/evening and then rushed over to BW's Bible Study Christmas Party and White Elephant gift exchange.  This group is such a blessing to our family that I could just gush about them for many posts.  They are a wonderful group of Christians who love the Lord and His Word and are diligent to learn whatever BW wants to teach them.  They have spoiled us in many ways in the past year and this evening was no exception. 

Friday morning was our homeschool group Christmas party at the ice skating rink.   I was blessed to have so many of the moms in my homeschool group to help me get my kids ice skates rented and get them out on the ice, especially since only one had ever skated before!  I honestly try to stay away from some of these events because with kids aged 2-4-6-8, it's just too exhausting to try to do big outings, but they had been begging to go ice skating since watching Charlie Brown Christmas.  My wonderful friends helped me get kids skates on, they helped teach my 4 & 6yos to skate while I took out my 2 year old (after one lap, he said "Mommy, I done.").  So I took his skates off and another friend watched him so I could skate with the others.  While I was doing that, another friend went off to find mittens for my kids to borrow because their hands were freezing (can you tell we aren't a SNOW kinda family?).  And what's even more amazing is that I never had to ask any of them - they just did it!  I am truly blessed with wonderful Christian sisters.  We had a truly great day together!

So that was just last week!  This week, my goal is to get my Christmas cards out and make enough mason jars of hot chocolate for all of my kids teachers (amazing since they aren't technically in school how many teachers and leaders they have in their lives!) as well as the Sunday School teachers who serve with BW at our church.  BW finishes his last final of the semester tomorrow! and I will get my husband back for a few weeks:)  We are also taking a family trip this weekend that I will write more about later. 

What is your Christmas season looking like?