Healed!!!

I feel sooooooo much better today! My throat still hurts when I swallow, but it's nothing compared to how it was yesterday. I don't feel lethargic and my body isn't all achy. :-) I truly believe the Lord touched me last night and I'm so, so, so glad!!!

I woke up several times last night, but still felt like I slept well. I woke up this morning and heard James clanging around in the kitchen. In a few minutes he showed up in the bedroom with a cup of his fantastical homemade hot chocolate and a plate with warm muffins on it. Wow!!! Breakfast in bed! This is AFTER he did all sorts of housework yesterday when I was feeling so rough. He had cleaned up the kitchen, loaded the dishwasher, scrubbed the stove top, swiffered the floor--after fixing dinner for all of us. Amazing. Same thing at lunch time today. I walk into the room and he's made sandwiches and ramen for everybody--mine already dished up and sitting on the table waiting for me. He's been drinking Super Juice again. HA! I love that stuff!!!!! :-)

I helped the kids with school today, then worked on the Christmas Memories book. It's a really neat book that I got the first year we were married. It's basically a journal, but only for Christmastime. You write in it each year under certain categories (Holiday Visits, Christmas Eve, Christmas Dinner, Favorite Gifts, etc.) so you can always remember the details you would otherwise forget about your holidays. Great idea. And it covers 20 Christmases! But I've been very, very bad and haven't written in it the past two years!!! So I looked up my blog archives and READ about Christmas in 2007 and 2008, then took notes so I'd have something to write in the book. Which made me wonder... do I really NEED the book since I have a blog record?! Why, YES! Of course I do! There's something so much more special about a real, live book than whatever comes up on a screen. Anyway, I'm almost done filling in the book. I'll just have to be sure and write down all about this year's Christmas as soon as it's over with so I don't have to reference the blog next year to be able to fill in the blanks! Ha!

Then there's the bittersweet news of the day. The sweet part is that it's been snowing ALL DAY LONG. :-) Makes me oh-so-happy!!! It was beautiful when I woke up and it's just kept on coming down all throughout the day. An interesting thing I've learned about New Mexico though... It might snow for a week straight, but it's never going to get more than 3" deep! Ha! It's CRAZY!!! And that's about what we have. Enough to be really, really pretty and enough for the kids to go out and have a lot of fun. Enough to make the Christmas tree even prettier in front of the window with all that winter outside. Enough to make the crackling fire all the more enticing and enough to make your hot chocolate taste that much sweeter. I'M SO HAPPY. That's the sweet part.

The bitter part? We missed church tonight!!! Is that lame, or what?! First of all, people here FREAK OUT over snow. You get and inch and they act like it's a foot and just sooooo dangerous. And I guess it is because they don't get enough of it to really learn how to drive in it or something--there really are a lot of accidents around here when the weather is not what I would consider to be severe at all. You listen to the news and these people take on the same tone about an impending snowstorm that folks in Louisiana take on when they talk about another hurricane about to strike. Weird. ANYWAY... Though there's not a whole lot of snow and it's really not THAT BAD out there... we only have one vehicle and it happens to be a mini-van. A mini-van that is PITIFUL in the snow--we learned that last year. Since the Envoy bit the dust a few months ago we're without a four wheel drive. About 30 minutes before time to leave for church James was going to take the van for a little spin and just see how the roads were. HA! He didn't even make it out of our driveway and he was slippin' and sliding, so he didn't leave the yard for fear he wouldn't make it back in! HA! It's SO PITIFUL!!! We knew that it would be far worse after church when it was darker and colder and more slick, and we'd never be able to get the van up the hill. What a gyp!!! It feels SO DUMB to stay home from church because of three measly inches of snow--how wrong is that?! We called to let our pastor know we wouldn't be there tonight and resigned ourselves anew to finding a 4x4 we can afford--somehow!

When we realized we couldn't make it to church, I threw together some spaghetti real fast (we were planning on just grabbing a bite after service) and we enjoyed a nice, warm dinner together. Then we got out our Body of Christ book and looked up the chapter that they were going through at church tonight and we gathered the fam and went through it together. Afterwards we went ahead into our family devotions and finished up the Mountain Preacher book we've been going through. The kids are so sad that it's over! Every night they would just BEG for us to read "just one more chapter!!!"--at the end of every chapter, even if we'd already read several. I love that! I think we'll pick another book like that to start into--something from an old timer giving testimony of the things God was doing "way back when." It somehow seems more "real" to the kids when it happened right here in the recent past than sometimes the Bible stories do. At this age they seem to relate to something more recent (and American?) a little better.

After devotions we had the kids get their pj's on and brush their teeth, then I MADE THEM watch The Star of Christmas with me. I, personally, think it is hands-down the BEST kid Christmas show ever made. It has soooooooooo many great parts. And great lines!!! "I'm praying to be delivered from the mighty and crushing hand of Moyer the Destroyer!" "The Star hasn't been displayed publicly for years due to the increased security risks during the reigns of King James the Greedy and King Sedgwick the I'll-Eat-Anything-Star-Shaped." HA! My kids HATE it though and I just can't understand why. Okay, well, maybe I do. It could be because James and I walk around the house singing the princess and the plumber song.

Plumber, you have saved me, from the monkey king!

Princess, it was nothing; just a little thing!

How could I not see it, as I took a drink?
Love was right beneath my nose, underneath my sink!

(Together)
Now we'll be so happy, no more grief or pain
Love will flow like water, running down our drain!!!!!

With her crown and with his wrench,
He a Brit and she so French
Nevermore to smell the stench
of clogged up love...!!!!!!

HA! It's sooooooooooooo great! CRACKS ME UP, but drives my kids batty. Which, of course, makes it that much more fun. :-) Some day they'll be parents and they'll understand. And they'll follow their kids around the house singing some song that will make their own children go mad. It's the precious cycle of life, you know?

Well, I'd best be going. I forgot that I've got a bedroom full of presents that I need to wrap now that everybody is in bed. James did some shopping for the kids on behalf of his folks--and his Mom had some other stuff sent out, too--so it might take a while! That's okay. I love wrapping presents. It's fun and makes me very happy. Especially when you're doing it to the proper Christmas music that is sufficiently jolly. :-)