Whew!

Boy do I have some blogging to do... but this is not the time.  I have to leave in 5 minutes or so for my last Cantata practice of 2011.  I'm looking forward to sleeping in late as I want next Saturday.  I'm going to bribe either Ben or Olivia to get up with Maddox so I can do it.  Probably Olivia.

Last night we had a caroling party with some of Olivia and Kelsey's friends.  At our house.  On the same day I had a CPR class to teach.  (What was I thinking when I scheduled this thing?)  As it turned out, Ben also had to go back and work some overtime last night so I was flying solo for just about the whole thing. You'd think I was stressed and strung out by the time it was over last night, but no so.  I was in a great mood!  We decorated cookies, played Christmas charades, ate snacks, and went caroling and cookie-delivering to a few of my neighbors (it was 32 degrees outside). And I even learned a few things along the way, which I wanted to write down before I forgot.

1. Sprinkles are evil.

2. It's a good idea to make sure someone celebrates Christmas before knocking on their door.  We had one of our "planned" deliveries not home, so we tried a few other people down the street.  The next two we tried had great Christmas decorations, but weren't home.  The third family... had no decorations.  At all.  And kind of looked Middle-Eastern when they came to the door.  I think we went caroling to a non-Christian family last night.  They were nice about it, but didn't really want to participate in our festivities.  Oops.  We made sure the next house had a wreath on the door and people we could see through the window.

3. Sprinkles are evil and they bounce.

4. A nice, stiff frosting is not preferred when you want things to stick to it.  Like sprinkles.

5. Sprinkles are evil and the only way to get them off your table is to sweep them into some large pan or bowl.  Do not delude yourself with the idea you can simple "wipe them up" with your sponge.

6. If you put a bowl of m&m's on the table for any reason (like to decorate cookies), the kids will eat them instead.

7. Sprinkles are evil, but at least they come up easily out of the carpet when you vacuum.  Frosting, on the other hand, does not.

And... last but definitely not least...

8. When you surprise people with the gift of caroling and cookies, it brightens up their Christmas season and yours.  We might just have to do this next year, too!

Merry Christmas, y'all!