'Twas the week before Christmas...

Is it just me or is anyone else in as much of a shock as I am that one week from today is Christmas Eve?! Honestly... where did the entire month of December go... scratch that... where did this year go?! I still have much to do to get ready for Christmas Eve (when we celebrate with Louis's family) and Christmas Day. On my list to do are the following:

*Send out Christmas Cards. I"m doing that today... we had to wait to get our Christmas pictures back, which we did yesterday. All the cards are already written and addressed; I just need to stick the pictures in the envelope, seal them and stick a stamp on the envelope. I'm hoping to drop them off at the post office on my way to Jeremiah's speech lesson this afternoon.

*Finish buying gifts- for my Dad, Jeremiah's teachers, and stocking stuffers for Louis and I. I thought I still had Louis's haul of presents to buy, (I was waiting for his last paycheck to come in before I hit the stores), but we just agreed this morning that rather than exchanging presents, we would do a joint gift of getting a new digital camera and buying "Band Hero" for the Wii. Band Hero won't be too much of a splurge since we already have the instruments from Rock Band, and enough Best Buy gift cards to make up half of the cost of the game. I'm excited about getting a new camera at last- I hate having to constantly borrow my dad's or my mother in law's!

*Decorate our Christmas tree! We bought it on Sunday (Day of Louis's birthday party), but didn't get around to decorating it, since Louis spent most of the afternoon hanging up our Christmas lights outside, and then he was in Phoenix from Monday night until last night. We're going to make a romantic evening out of it tonight after Jeremiah goes to bed. (Speaking of bed, we're putting Jeremiah in his twin bed for the first time tonight. Definitely send some prayers our way if you think about it; our little guy isn't known for staying put very well and he LOVES his crib!)

*Bake, bake, bake cookies. Lindsey is hosting a "cookie exchange" party on Saturday, where everyone in attendance brings a certain amount of cookies to share, including the recipe, and you leave with a nice assortment of cookies. I'm making strawberry jam thumbprint cookies- I'll bake those up tomorrow. Then on Sunday, Morgan is hosting her annual "cookie baking" party, where a big group of us spend all day baking up dozens upon dozens of cookies. Each recipe that we make (usually around 5 or 6 cookies from what I remember) gets tripled or quadrupled- and everyone also gets to take home a nice assortment as well. We've been doing this since high school and everyone looks forward to cookie baking- it's usually the one day a year where a lot of our high school friends see each other in person rather than just facebook!

*Wrap presents... I still have quite a few presents left to wrap, and the ones that I have wrapped already need to be decorated. I've been storing them in the baby's closet, since Jeremiah is known to climb on top of boxes, throw them, you name it, and I didn't want to have to wrap things more than once. I haven't decorated any presents yet so that the bows and ribbons don't get too smashed before they get opened.

In the midst of all this chaos, I still have to take my second glucose test to test for gestational diabetes (which will take up at least an hour of my time; you have to wait an hour after chugging the glucose before you can draw blood), clean our house, watch the last few Christmas movies that I haven't seen this holiday season yet (Home Alone 1 and 2, the Nativity Story, and A Christmas Story), take Jeremiah to look at Christmas lights and visit Santa, and find a few moments to stick my feet up and relax. Every little thing wears me out... and being 8 1/2 weeks away from my due date that is to be expected. Everything I eat also gives me heart burn, but since I' m constantly hungry (and needing to nourish my daughter) I can't exactly give up food. I can't wait for all of these horrible pregnancy symptoms, especially the leg cramps, to go away!!

Here are a few more pictures from our trip to Disneyland on Jeremiah's birthday: