I didn't do anything related to Christmas today (psyche!)

This morning after the girls and I had woken up, showered, and dressed, I pulled out one of the MoTab's Christmas albums. And then I played it. And no one complained. Why?

Because Andrew left this morning for Washington, DC, and will be gone all week.

So we reverently rocked out to Christmas music during breakfast. Reverently because, you know, it's MoTab, which doesn't actually lend itself well to rocking out. But there was a bit of ballet.

We were still working on breakfast when people started showing up for choir practice—we're a little sluggish in the morning—so it was a good thing that someone finished arranging the basement for me (thank you, Someone) because I'm pretty sure all I did last night was move the couch. Choir went well, although I was singing solo as the lone, and rather distracted, soprano. My kids were crawling all over the place, pulling on sheet music, and fighting over toys. Choir ended a little late so we had to rush to get through all the finishing touches of getting ready for church (hair, potty, socks and shoes, diaper bag, etc). Mirim chose to scream her head off during the whole pre-church rush. She was ready for a nap but it was too late for that. It was too late for a lot of things. Take lunch for example: the girls shared baggie full of a variety of cracker-type-things.

Church went fine, I guess. My mom, Auntie Josie and Andrew's mom came to sit with the girls. I sat on the stand with our Sunbeams class. They did regular four-year-old things all throughout the program like fidgeting, running off the stand to visit their parents, ignoring the chorister, forgetting their lines, pouting, kicking the wood paneling, playing with each other's hair and clothes and papers, begging to be taken to visit the bathroom, jumping up and down when they should be staying still, not singing when they should be singing and talking when they shouldn't be talking. That kind of a thing. Oi, vey! After an hour and twenty minutes of that, lemme tell ya...I was soooo done for the day.

But I took my sweet little Sunbeams to primary for two more hours. I lost one of them for about twenty minutes. We had six adults actively searching for her and couldn't find her anywhere. We looked in every classroom and every bathroom and outside in the parking lot. Eventually she was found wandering the halls looking for her dad because she had a hangnail. How she managed to evade six adults through ten minutes of diligent searching is beyond me.

I'm just glad we found her. My friend Reenie was getting ready to kick some trash.

"Did you hear about that girl at DI?" she asked. I told her I had.

"Well, I've got a nice pair of heels on and if I find anyone doing anything..." she trailed off and looked effectively menacing.

Luckily those heels didn't have to be used.

But you just never know what crazy things are going to happen. Like, my mom's friend recently had her van stolen. From her garage. Which was shut. Whoever stole it kindly took out the car seats before taking off with the van. And then they stopped about a half block away to ditch the Christmas presents and garage door opener on a someone's front lawn. And, as my friend Noel so aptly put it, "Who steals a minivan?!"

It's not like we live in a sketchy part of town, either.

Anyway, the rest of church was pretty same-old, same-old. Karen took Miriam home after sacrament meeting so that she could have a nap, which was nice because I don't think it would have been possible to juggle her and teach my lesson. My class was off the wall today.

After church we went home and Auntie Emily was over. She and Grandma had made dinner, which was wonderful because Rachel and I were starving—did I mention we didn't really eat lunch today? After dinner we pulled out the Christmas village.

That's two Christmas things in one day. Are you counting, Andrew?

Emily is getting married in a few weeks and she's using the houses from the Christmas village as her centerpieces. She decided on what parts to use tonight, which is why it came out in the first place. My mother-in-law has an amazing collection of village pieces, many of which are hand-painted, by her. It's really incredible.

Rachel could hardly contain herself. She was whooping with joy and jumping up and down. Not touching was a serious trial for her when the pieces started coming out of the boxes.

Emily arranged the houses and figurines she had picked on the boards for the centerpieces and then we set little electric tea light candles in the houses, turned off the lights, and watched them glow. Rachel loved it for a minute and then asked if she could see her pumpkin glow again. I regretfully informed her that her pumpkin had disappeared which threw her into a little tizzy but with so much Christmas joy to look at she soon forgot her grief.

Christmas in America is going to blow this girl's mind.