Holidays In Full Swing

It has been a pretty busy week around here. Thankfully the weather seems to be holding so far but we’ll see how things end up for our party on Sunday. I heard the terrible phrase “Winter Storm Warning” on the radio at lunch so it might be messy.

Monday was our last handbell practice before the Christmas Eve mini-concert and mass. It’s definitely a lot easier doing five pieces up in the choir loft than it was doing 14 down in front of the church. But knowing how worried we all were going into the concert makes the more than decent results so appreciated.

Tuesday was the annual IMA Christmas meeting. Our original speaker, an FBI agent from Washington, DC, was lost at the last minute because the government pulled their approval. Go figure. So instead of money laundering and terrorism we had a speaker about loss prevention instead. Not quite as flashy, but still interesting and eye-opening. We had an ok turnout – right around 30 people – and the gifts and raffle prizes were great this year. We didn’t win any of the raffle drawings but I got the cutest dip bowl and spreader that looks like one of those round striped mints. (Look for a picture of that after our party this weekend.) Adam got some kitchen towels that were nice, but that he regifted to his secret Santa at work since we didn’t really have use for them.

Wednesday we headed to Skyline with his parents to see some stand-up comedy. They had won free tickets in the drawing the club holds so all we had to cover were drinks (there’s a two drink minimum.) The host wasn’t too good and the headliner was ok. The opening act, Mike Merryfield, was undoubtedly the best of the three. He’s apparently a local although I’d never heard of him. All in all, a good time was had.

Today we’re apparently having a load of firewood dropped off. We (and by “we” I mean Adam and his dad. But I supervised!) had previously re-stacked the wood we already had to organize it when Chris and Katie cut down all kind of trees in their yard and gave us some of the results. So now we get to do it again to make room for this additional lumber. I doubt we’ll have any problem burning through it since we seem to have a fire going pretty much all weekend, every weekend.

Tomorrow is Adam’s grandma’s party up in De Pere. I suspect it will be very different from last year’s since there will be a drastic reduction in the number of babies in attendance. Adam was even told to forego his Santa routine. It should still be a good time – his relatives are fun. After we’re done there it’ll be time to come home and bake an obscene amount of cookies. Mmmm, cookies. I admit I’m cheating a little and most of them will be of the pre-fab persuasion. We got four boxes of frozen cookie dough to support the Catholic Central cookie drive at church a couple weeks ago. Aside from some Snickerdoodles, I plan to just arrange and bake the dough.

Sunday is our party. I have this feeling that between the possibility of heinous weather and the dismal RSVP results we’ve gotten, we might end up sitting there staring at each other for three hours. Luckily I realized this early enough that I had time to go find The Muppet Christmas Carol to have playing on the TV in case we get bored and lonely. Sunday morning will be some prep work (like putting up the tree… again…) and crockpot meatballs and then early afternoon I’ll kick into Martha Stewart high gear with the two mini appetizers and the dip I have planned. Nothing too difficult or showy. Just yummy. At this point I think I’m just short one serving bowl and I might end up using my African animals one. Or maybe I should bring back the Halloween bowl from the basement. In any case, everything appears to be under control. For now.

Monday is Christmas Eve, obviously. I’m not sure we have anything planned except for the aforementioned 9pm handbell commitment. I’m all done with my shopping. I just have a few things to wrap. Christmas Day we have a ham to contend with and we’re doing the Paalman Christmas thing in the early afternoon. Wednesday it’s back to work and since I’m all out of vacation I’m in it for the long haul. I’m generally ok with that. I should be able to keep myself busy with year-end stuff. I hope. We’re doing inventory on the 31st and I was pretty impressed with the decent number of volunteers I got to help count. I was fearing the worst, anticipating counting the whole plant by myself, so that’s a relief. Plans for New Year’s Eve are up in the air right now and it’s totally possible that we’ll end up sitting at home, falling asleep way before the ball drops. Wouldn’t be the first time…

And then it’s the new year. It looks as though the first two weeks of January will be insanely busy for me at work. It also looks as though I’ll be working at least 3 or 4 hours on Saturday the 5th. I’m hoping that by Friday I can get enough of my stuff done that I can get out of it but that seems unlikely. Boo for stupid accounting schedules.

That seems like a thorough enough recap for now. Merry Christmas everyone.