Christmas is right around the corner!

Everyone close to me knows that I work a ton of overtime in December. This is our busy time of year because we are setting up benefits for a lot of new clients that will be effective Jan 1st and also updating plans for our existing clients. After working a few weeks of 10+ hour days, it starts to get old and it's very easy to get burned out. I feel like I am at work more than I'm at home! A lot of times I find myself becoming a bah humbug at this time of year, because all I want to do is relax or sleep when I get home and I really have no desire to do any shopping or baking or anything fun and Christmasy. I am happy to announce that this will be my last year of being a scrooge, because I got the Associate Proposal Writer job that I had applied for, and this is their slow season. Yay!!! :) I will be starting my new position Jan 5th hopefully (still need to work that out with my current manager) and I'm looking forward to the new direction in my career path.

Despite being a bit of a scrooge, we have done several things over the past few days that have helped to get me in the Christmas spirit. Thursday after work, Lenny, Bella, and I went to the Journey to Bethlehem at one of the local churches with my mom, dad, and Carson. This has become quite the production over the past few years. Basically, it's a play following the journey that Joseph and Mary took to get to Bethlehem where they had the baby Jesus. You walk about 1/2 a mile through the church grounds and they have all kinds of people dressed up telling you that Joseph and Mary were just there a day or so before, and they are about to have a baby! They have stables set up with lots of live animals throughout the whole thing too. It's really cool! Towards the end you see Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus and everybody worshipping their newborn king. And then you go into the gym and have hot chocolate and cookies, just like Joseph and Mary did after Jesus was born. :)

Friday night we had our little work Christmas party/happy hour. Lenny of course stayed home with Bella, but I had fun hanging out with all my work buddies and seeing everyone's true personalities outside of work. We found that we've got some real karaoke fanatics in da house...and I am SO not one of them. Ha! Wish I could carry a tune a little better. I'm gonna miss everyone so much when I move to my new department! The good thing is, several of them are my really good friends, so I know we will keep in touch and still do things together even after I am at the new job.

Saturday afternoon, we had the privilege of seeing the Ambassadors of Harmony Christmas show at the Touhill performing arts center. This is an all men's acappella choir, and they are amazing! This was by far the best show I have seen to date. Lenny seemed to enjoy the first half of the show most, because they did some really funny skits in addition to the singing. The premis of the show was that Santa had been vacationing in Jamaica and got detained, so one of the elves was going to fill in for him this year. The head elf that was to fill in was hilarious! There was one part where Mrs Claus came in wearing a skimpy outfit and singing "Santa Baby," not knowing that it was an imposter and not the real Santa, and it was so funny how the elf was trying to make himself look like Santa so that he could smooch her! The second half of the show was more concert-y where the focus was on the sound. They always close the show by singing "Silent Night" by candlelight. They come out into the aisles of the auditorium on that one and it's so neat to hear all the different harmonies as they walk by. If you've never seen the show before, I would highly recommend it - it's incredible! Later that evening, we had Lenny's work Christmas party at Favazza's on the hill. It was okay, but nothing terribly exciting. The best part was that each table got to play the game LCR, and whoever won got a $50 gift card. It was fun playing that game- great ice breaker- but unfortunately neither of us won. Oh well. It was nice to finally meet everyone he works with. Now I will know who he's referring to when he tells me a story about someone from work.

We rounded the weekend out with me working yesterday (surprise surprise), but only for a few hours. We went to dinner at Talayna's in old St Charles, then went over to visit my new pal Kendall Elizabeth (baby Orf has a name!) and see how her and the new mama were doing. They were a little tired yesterday, I guess everything is starting to catch up with them. Apparently Kendall has her days and nights mixed up right now, and she is awake more during the night and then sleeps during the day. Hopefully for Jason and Janine's sake, Kendall will figure out day vs night soon so they can get some rest. She is a beautiful baby though and looks so precious all bundled up in her blankey like a little papoose! The whole childbirth process is so amazing to me, and seeing my best friend go through it all just makes me want to experience it all that much more. My clock is a'tickin, that's for sure!!! One of these days....