December 18

A week until Christmas! Hard to believe, although part of me will be glad to have the Christmas deadline over with and get back to regular life.

This was our first weekday of the school holidays! Yay! The big kids slept in, of course, while I got up as soon as I could manage and got a batch of cookies going and a few other every morning routines like yoga and my quiet time. By the time the kids were up, fed, and "family worshipped" it was 10:30 -- not my idea of an early start on the morning.

Our plan was to sew together the History of Christmas quilts we've been making in school the last three weeks. We got David's top put together and Laura's started. Then some friends arrived and I paused the quilts to stitch a bunch of Boy Scout badges onto a shirt for a friend.

After lunch I headed to the post office where everyone else in town had also congregated. Fortunately the line for the automated machine was only 5 deep rather than 15. Back at home I hit the books again, working on my L. M. Montgomery lesson plan.

I cooked a turkey yesterday so we could have leftovers for a few days and it was "heat up your own dinner" night since James and I took off to get a few things at Joann Fabrics before rendezvousing with the entire family to see the new Star Wars film. Everyone else is much more into it than I am but it is fun to go as a family and I enjoyed hearing a group of men in their 40's audibly respond to the movie as it went along. Hilarious!

Time to get some rest and maybe a few minutes to read.....

(For those interested, here is the key to the Christmas quilt: 1) Jesus' birth; 2) Rome's Saturnalia celebrations which occurred around the winter solstice; 3) Boniface, Apostle to Germany and the legend of the oak of Thor; 4) Christmas in medieval England with yule logs, mince pies, and holly; 5) St. Francis introduces live nativities; 6) Martin Luther relishes Christmas, preaches many Christmas sermons and writes Christmas carols; 7) the puritans react to the drunken revelry and ban Christmas in the UK and other countries; 8) Christmas in colonial America; 9) Christmas in Victorian England; 10) Christmas in America in the 1800's; 11) the history and legends of Santa Claus; 12) Christmas today in our family)