Here Come the Holidays

Well, this week had some great adventures in it. First of all, it was Evening and Excellence for the Young Women. I spent most of last Sunday making flower magnets to go along with our theme "Plant seeds of virtue". It went very well, I think. We have some very talented young women in our ward. Two of the girls sang solos and both did amazingly. The other girl read a poem she wrote. They were all so wonderful. As stressed as I can get about young women and all the hard work that it is, I absolutely adore each girl and getting to know them. Wednesday, I get to take a monotony breaker from my regular work and attend a sports nutrition conference. It was so interesting and fun. In undergrad, we didn't get a whole lot on sports nutrition. It was nice to here a little bit more.

So, with the weather getting colder, and Thanksgiving only two weeks away, I am becoming very nostalgic for Christmas. I realized that I have no Christmas piano music, however. So the hunt is on. I know I wont have my sisters here to play duets with me (especially Brittany because we played so many duets together that we were so in sync), but I love playing Christmas music. We also don't have any Christmas CDs. So I'm going to buy a couple of the MTC's cd's. Maybe Josh Grobin's too (shh, don't tell Aaron). I'm just so excited to decorate and try to make our little apartment look festive! I have to say that my dream is to make our house like my home growing up (during the Christmas season). My mom would always be burning cinnamon, pumpkin, or spice candles. Dad would listen to Christmas music while looking at the lighted tree in the dark. We'd watch Christmas movies no matter how silly they were (A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and every version of A Christmas Carol you can think of). I got my plane ticket to Salt Lake! Yeah!! I'll be away from Aaron for a couple of days, but when you have to go cheep, that's what you have to do. We get to spend Christmas in Canada and I get to see some of their families traditions. The most famous being playing tag in the school on Christmas. I'm a little worried about the drive up there and I hope Aaron's siblings understand if I do incredibly slow when it's my turn to drive. I'd be happy to just take care of the little boys, but they'll need to warm up to me again first. I love the holidays. It always makes me think of when I was young going to temple square and looking at the life size nativity and hearing the song. I think my favorite primary Christmas song is "Once Within a Lowly Stable". I don't think I'll get around to writing Christmas Cards to people (I'm not good at that at all) so here's an early Merry Christmas!!