…I took a nap. It was awesome.

Merry Christmas!

…I went to bed at midnight, exhausted. Right after posting. Oh, and after:

• Going to three stores to find gray leggings in extra small (no luck, hopefully the mediums will fit)
• Making salsa, fudge, make-ahead mashed potatoes, peppermint candy brownies, stuffed mushrooms and various other finger foods
• Appreciating my mother-in-law who washed every dish I dirtied alongside me as I cooked
• Visiting a few friends
• Enjoying a “Bethlehem Dinner” (aka., carpet picnic) with six adults and six kids
• Enjoying a “Nativity Play” (quotes intentional) with five kids and one reluctant almost-teenager
• Enjoying much, much food and fudge
• Enjoying going around the room and sharing our favorite Christmas memories (this will become a new tradition–thank you, dad)
• Enjoying watching the kids open just one gift
• Enjoying some good adult chitchat after the kids went to bed
• Not so much enjoying my ultra-last minute run to Walgreens when I realized I’d completely forgotten to buy my kids their traditional ornaments and our family Christmas book this year.  Luckily, Walgreens provided (only store open until Christmas Eve.  Good to know.)  The ornament/book tradition was something I started years ago and have preserved mightily.  This year, I simply forgot.  Both of them.  Totally and completely spaced it.  Until at nine o’clock tonight, when Megan looked at me and said, “What about our ornaments and the book?”  I looked back at her and said, “We’re not doing them yet.”  She replied, “Why not?  Because you forgot?”  “No,” I lied.  “Because our relatives don’t have that tradition, and we don’t want to make them feel bad.”  She looked at me like I was a puddle of pathetic and I knew that she knew I was lying.  But isn’t that what Christmas is all about:  lying to your kids?  She’ll get over it.
• Enjoyed writing this post and wrapping up (literally) Christmas Eve.

…I took my gorgeous friend out to lunch for her fortieth birthday.  She is stylish and fabulous and fun, and she showed the rest of us just how good forty can look.  (Are you reading this, Michealyn?  See, even her name is cool.)  As I sat at the feet of this woman who really has made forty “the new twenty,” I couldn’t help but think about how forty was just a knockin’ on my door, and how I had a lot of work to do between now and then to ensure that my fortieth birthday would bring me the same fate.  (Funny how I never heard that “forty is the new twenty” when I was twenty.)  If forty is to become my new twenty, then I have a year and a half to:

1.  Erase all my wrinkles.

2.  Lose ten pounds of fat and gain three pounds of muscle.

3.  Convince myself that majoring in English will lead to some kind of employment after graduation.

4.  Re-learn how to flirt.  (See #3.  I needed a backup plan.)

5.  Think that I’m dressing hip when really I’m wearing a denim shirt tucked into white jeans. (True story.  That outfit was one of my faves at BYU.  I thought it was so crisp.)

6.  Dream of far-off adventures in faraway lands, with a happy ignorance to the fact that one day those adventures would occur within five miles of my parents’ house.

7.  Pretend to be recently “mature” while still fighting viciously with my sister over our favorite pair of cutoff jean shorts.  (They were hers, but I stole them repeatedly.)

8.  Think that Robin Hood is an emotionally harrowing movie.

9.  Go completely and utterly broke.

10.  Wait, I have #9 down.