Started Packing and life's lessons

We started packing!!! Hooray!! We will start moving back officially on December 31st,  2 WEEKS and 2 DAYS.  We are excited we can hardly stand it.  I think that is the only thing that is getting me through NO decorations and no family except my parents for Christmas.   We got all the holiday stuff up in the in our attic at Idaho Street and a lot of other stuff in the high attic there also.  It felt so good. I have packed all the Tea party stuff, salt shakers, and all my breakables in the Sewing room.  I also packed the whole sewing room, except for the machines and some basics in case there is a sewing need before then.  Finished all the Christmas stuff on Tuesday and got it mailed off that day. It felt good.  Am packing every day now, going through and getting rid of things.  Had the back of my van full of bags and boxes that I took to St. Vinnies.  It is feeling gooood!  Almost every day is packing or sorting now. 

We had our Christmas party last night.  The Primary was in charge I found out less than a month ago.  It went wonderful, but next year I will plan a little better.

Yesterday was an interesting experience.   I wrote about my fast I had, well since then I have been focusing on enjoying the moment and being pretty successful.  I have pretty much accepted the speed with which things are going.  Yesterday at the end of the day I was so happy I could hardly stand it.  As I wrote in my journal, it was a great day!  But as I wrote I realized it wasn't a great day.  I wasn't depressed as I wrote, more amazed at the way the end of the day made the whole day seem great.  It went like this.  I got up and exersized, so far so good, then stared making cookies and brownies (for the Branch Christmas party). Was exhausted so took a much needed break (it was a very physical week) watched a cute Hallmark Christmas movie, kept feeling like I should take my shower then finish the movie-didn't listen to the prompting-then the phone rang.  It was one of our vacation renters, I had forgotten to tell our cleaning lady to go in and it was one of the times they had paid for cleaning.  It was just about 1 1/2 hours before we had to leave to go to the church.  Remember, I hadn't showered since Thursday, and it is Saturday, I had done the elliptical-sweaty- plus greasy hair by now.  I call the cleaning lady and her car is in the shop, no way to get down to the house to clean.  I have to take her.  I jump in the car to her house which is in Newport, about 7 or 8 min away-got back to our vacation rental, remember how I look, go to the door, apologize in person.  Fly back home with 20 minutes to get dressed, no time for a shower, I still have to pack my cookies and brownies.  I call someone else to pick up the Santa suit, because now there is no time for us to do that (I acutally had that all covered then our Santa canceled at the last minute)  I have a tension headache by now.  Now I have about 10 minutes to put on my makeup, clean clothes on my dirty body, (thank goodness I had planed to wear my Santa Hat!!) and roar out of the house with Steve to pick up one of our sweet primary boys that we have adopted so to speak.  Steve drops us off, runs back to our rental to pick up the cleaning lady and take her home.  I start setting up with Merlin (he's my 11 year old adoptee) wondering where my counselors are.  After about 15 minutes one of them shows up, her son helps us and her husband goes to get the Santa suit.  Still no 2nd counselor.  Then we look for table cloths, we find some Christmassy ones that don't really fit, but oh well they work.  We go to get the cups and etc, NO CUPS!!  Debbie my counselor calls her husband to pick up some cups on his way back to the church.  In the meantime my other counselor finally comes in and she has no decorations.  We ask as sweetly as we can where they are, and she said they are supposed to be there.  Nope they aren't.  Oh well too late worry about that.  People start coming we are all set up but no Pianist!  I call Chris and she says "I'm coming"  in a very lackadaisical tone of voice.  Then the party starts, I ask the branch Pres if he is conducting, he says"no you're in charge".  Okay I ask Steve to say the opening prayer, I realize I am going to lead our singing time.  By now I am acutally starting ot relax and having a really good time.  Santa comes in and we hit the jackpot!!! He better never move as long as I am Primary Pres. (his wife is my amazing counselor, so I really don't want them to move).  He was the best Santa I have ever seen.  He actually talked to the kids walked around and talked to the adults quickly and then we all yelled goodbye to him.  Everyone ate, I got to visit with all my Primary kids and the adults.  We had yummy treats and plenty of them.  It was a success.  Everyone loved it and lots of people stayed and cleaned up.  On our way home we took the stuff out of the back of my car that went in the high attic at Idaho street, and kept looking at each other like two little kids on Christmas morning, talking about the move back.  All the way home I kept saying "I am soooo Happy!!!"  I learned that in the end, everything always works out, one by one everything came together just at the right time.  I also thought it was interesting that I had totally forgotten how the day was actually kind of hard.  When the day was over it felt great.  I told the primary kids today in Sharing time that the reason I as so happy, ( I told them a VERY abbreviated version) was because I was serving and when we serve we feel the love and light of Christ.  Our sharing time was  about Christ being the "life and the light". 

I am grateful Heavenly Father loves us so much that he gives us learning experiences.  I love my calling.  I feel privileged to serve these great little kids.  It helps with the grandma ache I get off and on when I look at the blogs. 

love you all!!!