December 23, 2012 - almost there...

Christmas is almost here and I have not been so glad of its arrival since I was a child.

Early on I tried to talk Gretchen into cutting back on what we did for Christmas this year. The idea was to minimize the gift giving (not eliminate, just keep it simple, like homemade Christmas cookies) so that we could focus on keeping Christmas relatively relaxed. Gretchen insisted that we needed to buy gifts for everyone because they were going to get gifts for us. What she didn't realize was that she had already given them a significant Christmas gift – she survived and was getting better.

I had hoped that we would be able to have a nicely decorated house and be able to invite friends and family over and give them baked gifts (Peter and I always bake Christmas cookies and Gretchen and her dad used to back spritz). Instead we ran around buying gifts and I finally had to tell Gretchen that we would not be baking cookies this year since all the shopping had taken a toll on me. She wasn't happy but I firmly held my ground to eliminate on more item to get done in the last few days before Christmas. We did still decorate the house, we just didn't get to share it with our family and friends.

On a more positive note, Gretchen sang in church this morning and she is scheduled to sing again next week. Singing is stressful for her but it is the kind of stress that is beneficial. I did tell her that if she is going to be singing in the near future she needs to have people coordinate it through me. There were some details that got mixed up and caused a lot of wasted effort trying to straighten things out. She was able to work things out in the end but it took some effort. When she gets to the point where she can again manage multiple things at once then I will let her schedule her singing engagements.

Gretchen did sing wonderfully. God was gracious in allowing her to retain her singing ability with very little effort. She does need to sing more, I think it would be good for her. There are some possibilities at other churches, hopefully they will materialize.

Unfortunately, we now have a sick household. All three of us have runny/stuffy noses and I have a nasty headache. I know that my problem is lack of sleep because I got a call to go in to work at 9:30 last night to fix a computer. I didn't get home until after midnight and didn't wind down enough to go to sleep until almost 2:00. Since Gretchen needed to be down at the church early to warm up I couldn't sleep past 6:30 this morning so I need sleep. I suspect that Peter and Gretchen are both suffering similar since they didn't go to bed until after 11:00 and I suspect it took a while to get to sleep. Fortunately I took tomorrow off so maybe we can all get some extra sleep. Please pray for our general health.