10 – Spent a couple of hours catching up with my best friend last Thursday while we treated ourselves to manis and pedis.

11 – Date night with my hubby. Yummy dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and some power shopping for Christmas gifts. As a bonus, we didn’t have to pay a babysitter since all three girls were at a friend’s birthday sleepover!

12 – Finally managed to get the house clean. That’s no small feat when you have three messy children!

13 – Mark decided to stay home instead of going hunting!!…so we took the kids on our annual Christmas trip to the Bass Pro Santa Shop. The girls wrote letters to Santa {so sweet}. My youngest asked Santa for “snow outside.” {Wonder if he’ll deliver on that one?!} After the BPS, we ate dinner at Cracker Barrel…one of the girls’ favorite places to eat…then visited my great niece for her birthday. While we were at my niece’s house, we watched a little bit of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation {the greatest Christmas movie ever…in my opinion}.

14 – We found three strands of clear lights that we’d been searching for all over town! {Read more about it here.}

15 – I sat in the audience of my church choir’s Christmas program this year instead of singing. It was great to be reminded of what the audience experiences when the hope of Jesus is shared through song.

16 – We hosted our Sunday School class Christmas party. {Read more about it here.}

17 – Listening to my girls sing Christmas songs along with the radio. During our afternoon running around, I had to stop and enjoy the season {and the Christmas carols} instead of rushing through it. Sometimes I want to rush through the busyness so I can enjoy times of rest. This afternoon I took time to enjoy the busyness of the season.

18 – Seeing my baby’s smile with yet another missing tooth. She’s missing three! I told her we might have to start feeding her applesauce if she lost more teeth.