A tired Christmas.

That is the only way we could figure out to describe how we were feeling tonight. Justen and I are just plain old worn out to the point that we can hardly even tell that it's almost Christmas. There are no halls decked, no cookies baked, and no music playing. I'm not even sure if I feel sad, pitiful, guilty or just plain old grinchy at my lack of Christmas spirit. We don't have a tree up and tonight decided we just aren't going to put one up. We are just to tired. Luckily Garrison is to young to know the difference.

Now don't get me wrong, I love Christmas. It's usually such a magical time of year. But this year we've just decided to admit defeat and go to bed early. I think this last week we've been in bed at 6:30 every night until tonight. We've had FFA activities the last two weekend in a row, and have them tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday after school. I've had two state accreditation things going on in the last two weeks, not to mention a host of other crazy things happening at work. And you may wonder why on earth would I blog about such an utter failure and defeat as canceling Christmas at our house, well the answer is simple. I'm to tired to get out of bed and go do anything else and to frustrated with myself to quit thinking about it.

We have decided we are going to do a few things to celebrate the season, but it is definitely not going to be the same. We are doing our annual Kash for Kids drive at school where we do a sub for santa thing for some families in our area. I love doing this, it is so much fun. We gather money and food all through December and then tommorow we go shopping for their gifts and dinner. Then next week we'll wrap and deliver it. It's such a great thing to see my high school kids be so giving. My classes alone have raised over $800 so far this year for the project, and as a school we are approaching the $30,000 mark (at least that's the rumor I heard today). It's wonderful we are able to pay for kids braces, and glasses and lots of other great things in the community. Justen and I also have our own little service project going that we decided to do last month, but it's a secret so I can't share, but it's been pretty fun for us too. So a little service helps it feel more like Christmas.

Of course we are doing the whole gift thing, not that it's all that important. This year we don't even really care about that much. We just aren't into "things". Now if someone offered to clean my house or bake me some christmas cookies (German ones of course) I'd probably get pretty excited (or say do my scrapbooking for me). But every time someone asks what we want for Christmas I can't come up with much of anything. Now part of that is because we've been very blessed this year and don't need anything, and wants just don't seem all that important when there is so much need out there. But part of me just doesn't care. I'm to tired to put much thought into anything at this point. I'm actually most excited about a few of the projects I've been working on for other folks, although some of you may be getting your gifts in January at the rate I'm moving. Garrison will get a few toys that we bought last year at the day after sales, but we're not even sure we're going to bother wrapping them. Besides if we wrap them we may have a repeat of last year where he chucked the toys and played with the paper and boxes.
Now I know Christmas is suppose to be about Christ. But somehow without all the other traditions I just can't seem to see it. We discussed in one of our Sunday school lessons a couple of weeks ago that when people's basic needs aren't met they can't focus on things of the spirit. Well, we were talking about things like food and shelter, but I'm starting to think that applies to our physical and emotional stress levels as well. I feel that if I could just find a way to clear everything else out of my life, the spirit that comes with Christmas would have room to come in.

So we have resigned ourselves to having a low key non-christmassy December. We are hoping to get to the live nativity pageant in West Weber next week, but with my luck a water main in the greenhouse will burst and I'll get called in to go deal with or something else similar. That's just the way this month has gone. At least next week we are flying to Oregon, so we can look at my parent's tree and eat their cookies and at least feel a little like Christmas does still exist. Of course we'll probably end up stuck in an airport because our plane can't take off and be stressed to no end by the time we get there, but hey at least there will be cookies on the other end. Oh, I so hope there are cookies...... and maybe a little time to recuperate from life and find Christmas.