Bah! Humbug!

The stomach bug, that is... Last weekend was a complete wash thanks to some lovely germs Jacob brought home with him from preschool. Some very unwelcome visitors if I do say so myself! Jacob was sick all of Friday night with a stomach virus and moped around all of Saturday with the same symptoms (just not as violent as the night before.) We thought it was all over by Saturday night. Jacob went to bed without protest and was sound asleep as soon as his little head hit the pillow. (And what a very clean pillow it was seeing as we must have done at least five loads of laundry the night before cleaning up the aftermath.)

Fast forward to 5:30 am on Sunday morning... I awoke with an unsettling feeling in my stomach. Uh-oh. I knew this was not going to end well for me. But, I was in no way prepared for what would occur over the next seven hours. That's right, my friends. SEVEN hours!!! Poor Dylan. Poor me, but poor Dylan. He put up with my moaning and groaning all day and on top of it, the bug started to move on to Daniel by Sunday afternoon. Monday morning came and I dragged myself out of bed (only because I had to since Dylan was abandoning ship to go to work) and managed to make it through the day. I was pleasantly surprised when Dylan came home early, but the pleasantly left the building when he reported to me that he only came home because he was sick, too.

So, again, I say, "Bah! Humbug!" Praise the Lord the stomach bug has now gone away and I can resume my Christmas to-do list. The other day I was in the kitchen feeling very overwhelmed as I made my list of remaining things to do before Christmas. I found myself asking how in the world I was going to get all of this stuff done before Christmas??? Thanks to five days being completely wasted due to the stomach bug, I was really running out of time! I began envisioning all the late nights I had ahead of me. After all, here it is ten days before Christmas and I still have to do Christmas cards, wrap presents, bake lots of goodies to give as presents, get Christmas photos taken, take a picture of the boys in front of the Christmas tree, drive around and see all the Christmas lights, go see Santa and many other things that I have forgotten already! Then, I passed by a sign I have hanging in our kitchen. The most true statement about this Christmas holiday. It reads, "Christmas begins with Christ." And then, my list didn't seem so important.

So, if you don't get your Christmas card or present until after Christmas (or if you don't get one at all!!), please know, it's not because we don't care. It's because we are choosing to spend our Christmas celebrating the birth of Christ instead of pulling our hair out to meet our own deadlines.

So, Merry Christmas! I hope all of you are able to step back and enjoy the real reason for Christmas!