Its Christmas Week

Christmas week came on the tail of 2 weeks of college finals so I find myself not ready for the holidays. The tree still needs to be trimmed, gifts have not been purchased and holiday baking is only a thought at this time. I find myself consumed with college and caring for my daughters with little time for preparing for the holiday season.

Holiday preparation is not the only thing suffering. My writing has suffered greatly over the past few months as I devote much of my time to my classwork. I have not posted in this blog since August. I continue to write for AC/Yahoo in the pregnancy/fertility category. I have not done any work on my weight loss or fitness book despite the fact that both are near completion. I find that being a fulltime college student although an important part of my life right now has consumed so much of my time that it is becoming difficult to accomplish my writing projects. I wish I knew how other adult college students juggle college, career and homelife?

My only plan for surviving the holidays is to take each day as it comes devoting my time to whatever seems to be the most important task. My daughters are on school break right now and my finals are done so I am free from college demands until January 5th. Now is the time to attend to Christmas preparations.

Sunday I picked up approximately 20 bags filled with groceries and delivered them to my church for distribution to the families in our Hillsdale Care program. There were also gifts for each family to be delivered along with the food items. I was thankful for those that volunteered to help me unload the bags from my car. I ended up delivering to one family after church because the person that was assigned to that family was absent from church Sunday.

My youngest daughter helped me to get the tree in the stand last night and tonight we put three stands of lights on it and the garland. Tomorrow we will put the ornaments on it.

Hopefully I can get some gift shopping done over the next few days. I finished paying all but one of my December bills so I have a pretty good idea of how much money I can spend on gifts.

Not sure how much baking we will have time to do but we will bake up a few batches of cookies to take to neighbors because that is a family tradition. I did make up some chocolate candies Sunday night but that is almost gone.

We have an advent wreath that we have been lighting each Sunday of Advent and will light the Christ candle on Christmas eve. I have been using the church bulletin advent passages as part of our advent family service. The advent wreath has been part of our Christmas celebrations ever since the girls were very young and I think they really look forward to it each year.

I am really looking forward to Christmas eve service and then spending time with my parents, brothers, sister and Mary on Christmas day. I will call my other sister sometime on Christmas. I really miss her especially on holidays.

Its Christmas week. Are you ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus?