The holiday Spirit

Some years Christmas is nothing but stress. Some years it is a source of joy. I think this year is going to be the second kind. I have almost all of my shopping done already. I have all of my indoor decorations up. I think our tree is gorgeous and love that Cecily jumps for joy every time she sees it and yells, "It's so beautiful!" I love that I'm not in the middle of a writing project and therefore I can take all month to work on craft projects that will make Christmas less expensive and more fun for me. I got to go to a "kick off December right," girls night on the first day of December and did my nails and toenails for the season, along with eating tasty food and enjoying great company. The next day I had a perfect birthday, and the day after that, I got to have dinner with my family and open presents. That was today. I'm really looking forward to the season.

Now to the photos, which is really the important part, am I right? Apparently I didn't take any photos before Thursday. I don't remember a lot of what I did before Wednesday. I do know I helped Julia for like 3 hours on Tuesday because she needed a window cleaned inside and out including the tracks (and she doesn't own a vacuum). On Wednesday I got to have lunch with two ladies from my old writing group and it was fabulous. I found out the one who didn't already have an agent got one last week after only sending 6 queries. That's insanity. Most people send out hundreds before getting an agent. I'm so elated and jealous and not sure I should be jealous at the same time. Having an agent means pressure. I waffle back and forth between feeling ready for that kind of pressure and thinking that is the worst idea I've ever had. Steve went out with friends to say goodbye to one that was moving away that night. Thursday was the last day of November and I had a short story due. I had to go check and see if I'd told you about it already. I don't think I did. I found out from a writing group I'm part of on Facebook that thebrothersuber.com was doing a submission call for a short story that was a sci-fi retelling of a fairytale. That's exactly what I was doing with the last book I wrote, except I used Alice in Wonderland. I wasn't sure if they would consider AinW a fairytale, so I just took the same world I had already created and picked a different fairytale to tell about. I picked Little Red Riding Hood because it was the one I could picture fitting the best within my world. I just barely slid that baby in under the deadline, which was midnight on November 30th. I'll let y'all know if it gets chosen for publication. Also being the last day of November, I realized we hadn't visiting our visiting teaching sisters, so my partner and I put together these holiday potpourri bags and delivered them to the sisters we visit. I love the smell of that stuff. If you want to try it out yourself, you can get the recipe here: http://rachelschultz.com/2013/12/12/cinnamon-cranberry-stove-top-potpourri/

Friday, I planned on doing fun stuff and relaxing because that writing deadline almost killed me. I don't think I got enough sleep for the whole week beforehand. I felt like a zombie all day on Thursday. But instead, I wrote a letter to a friend for the kick-off of #LighttheWorld, put dinner in the crockpot, exercised, roasted a pumpkin, made 4 loaves of gluten-free pumpkin bread, took the girls to pick out Christmas presents for their cousins, and cleaned out my car. But at least I got to go to the girls' night that night. It was so much fun.

Saturday was my birthday! I turned 39. And instead of rehashing everything, you get my summary from Instagram: Thank you for all the birthday wishes! I had a wonderful day. We put up and decorated our Christmas tree, I got to exercise, we celebrated Mira getting her art selected for the Springville Art museum's children's art exhibit (they had an opening "gala"), went to dinner and the BYU MOA M.C. Escher exhibit, played a new game at dragons keep, and now I'm going to listen to my book and crochet. It was so lovely!

I'm looking forward to another great week this week. I hope your Christmas Spirit is thriving as well. If not, check out the #LighttheWorld initiative. If nothing else, the introductory videos will make you cry. :) (It's put on by our church, but it's almost completely non-denominational Christian. The idea is to purposely do things this season to emulate Christ as a way to remember Him at this time of year.) For example, yesterday's theme was "I was thirsty and ye gave me drink," from Matthew 25:35. So we donated money to an organization that provides clean water to people who need it around the world. Today's theme was, "Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days," from Matthew 12:12 (the idea being that we should do good works on the Sabbath and not just sit around or do housework) so we wrote letters to Great Grandpa Frohlich and are going to mail them tomorrow along with a family photo. I appreciate the help to be less commercial during this sacred season. The link to the calendar, videos, and ideas is here:  https://www.mormon.org/

Also, here are all the photos I got off Steve's phone tonight of things that happened a while ago.

The Tabernacle viewing and subsequent visit to the Bean Museum:

The Daddy/Daughter Date from halloween:

And a "family photo" in bed that Cecily insisted on. :)