Squished

This past weekend we were squeezing it all in.

On Friday I was determined to get our neighbor goodies delivered.  The fam and I had been working on them all week, and I noticed that my gingerbread men were beginning to look diseased.  The icing was morphing into gingerbread-men-chicken-pox or something like it.  The end of their lookin'-good counter time was fast approaching.

This picture is pre-disease.  Some of the gingerbread men started getting spots on them.  I had to sort through them to find the best to give, the rest are comfortably sleeping in my freezer, waiting to be consumed by those of us who don't mind diseased gingerbread.

I assembled the goodies, prepared packages for giving, gathered my girls, and sent them out.

I know it's a little early for such things, but we're on a schedule around here as we try to get ready for our
Big Christmas vacation (4 days!).

For date night on Friday, Bill and I tried to finish up the small and simple Christmas shopping for the kids.  We had only limited success (but luckily we did have some), so I guess that means we didn't finish.  Which means we have only 4 days to do it.  Oh my.

Saturday morning we had to divide and conquer.  Bill and Mauri attended Breakfast with Santa at the church,

and Shilo and I headed off to her swim meet.  Shilo was swimming the 100fly for the first time competitively on her Aces team.  She was nervous.

(Shilo's in lane 2)

She got a Silver State time, and could qualify for A-League in high school swim if she can repeat her performance this upcoming Thursday.  She kept saying, "Butterfly isn't my stroke."  I told her maybe it is.  She also took 3 seconds off her 200free, so she was satisfied with her performance, however, she told me after every event that she hadn't swum her hardest.  I wanted to shake her and say, "What do you think this is??  It's a competition!!  Swim your hardest!!"  I look forward to the day when she tells me she gave it all she had.

The rest of the day involved:

trip taxi-service scheduling (Bill)
a horse parade and McDonald's (Bill and Mauri)

toy-selling and pizza-delivery (Taylor)
house cleaning (almost everyone)

a babysitting job (Shilo)

a tanning salon (Lexee)

a ward Christmas dinner (Bill and Tina)

a boys high school basketball game (Lexee, Taylor, Bill and Tina)

and a haircut (Tina for Bill, at 10:30pm).

Sunday was loaded too, with:

meetings (Bill)
talk preparation (Mauri with Tina)
invitation creation for an upcoming stake event (Tina for Bill)
church (good thing my kids got there on time and saved me a seat)
talk giving (Mauri)
choir nursery (Lexee and Shilo)
2 batches of Mrs. Allen's candy
(one with burnt sugar bits in it, one slightly hard... I guess that's what you get for trying to git 'er done on a Sunday)
tithing settlement (everyone)
temple recommend interview (Taylor)
phone call with Britt (Bill and Tina)
finals-week stress (Britta, Lexee, and Shilo)
and gift wrapping
(Mauri was so excited to finally have presents under the tree, she could hardly get to sleep).

How's that for squished?