Christmasing & Paying It Forward

First Advent -- Watching You've Got Mail -- Stocking fabric
Stocking scraps -- Christmas shopping with Bolivia -- Olivia's snowmen
Olivia's & Bryan's Christmas trees -- Shoes out for St. Niklaus Day -- Our friends' Christmas tree

Hallelujah--Bryan finished finals last Thursday! Since then we've basically been partying and getting ready to visit family for Christmas. As of this evening, all but one of the Christmas projects I've been working on are FINISHED and only a few more presents need to be wrapped. Bryan, like clockwork, is now suffering from his stress-induced post-finals sickness, but I'm hopeful that he'll be on the mend soon. Luckily he's at least been feeling well enough in spurts to go out and have fun. Olivia has been drawing all kinds of Christmas things, including the snowmen and Christmas trees above. And I have stuck to my guns and withheld from decorating for Christmas other than setting out one nativity set for Olivia to play with and adding a star to the front door. (We also have a little tree up next to the TV, but that is always there. Bryan and Olivia insist on calling it a Christmas tree. I am from Oregon. It is just a regular pine tree.) And to make everything just that much better, we've been listening up a storm of Christmas music on Pandora*.

So I didn't really mean to take a break from blogging, but we've been for reals busy lately getting ready for all kinds of Christmas goodness. And I'd blog about the projects, but, yeah, they're all Christmas presents and I'm not into spoiling Christmas in the name of a blog post.


In other, completely unrelated news, I am so grateful for doctors. More specifically, this evening I'm especially grateful for our friend who is a doctor who, out of the goodness of his heart, came over this afternoon and gave me a full exam on my knee that started hurting real bad yesterday. He was so thorough and thoughtful and, thank goodness, he's fairly certain it's a minor problem and he told me what to do to work on fixing it. I mean, seriously. I could not be more grateful. I have such nice things to say about doctors. I would never make it through med school, but I am oh-so-grateful that there are intelligent, caring people who do make it through med school and then spend the rest of their lives helping people feel better.

Our congregation at church is extra full of medical, dental, and optometry students and I really make a point not to request their services for free, and especially not at church when they're trying to focus on the gospel. But I'm so grateful for our dentist friend who's checked Olivia's teeth after nasty bonks and for our doctor friend who came over and made me feel better today. It makes me that much more grateful that every now and then people ask me for help with sewing or crafting questions and (usually) I'm able to help them out. Not that I really feel like answering a sewing question or lending scrapbook paper is on par with in-home medical and dental exams, but I'm glad that we all have our talents and can kind of pay it forward in a really good way when someone is in need.

Yeah, that's all I got. Peace out.

*My favorite Christmas station on Pandora for the past couple years is my "Michael Buble Holiday" station. Give it a try! :)