The Geese Are Getting Fat

Oh, so it's pictures you want????

Hah.

First, this kid:

Does she look dazzlingly enormous to anybody else? Every weekday morning except Monday, I hustle the kids into their clothes and through breakfast and into the car and down the drive and to the store and across the road and through the door and into the store so I can make coffee, set out jams, turn on cooler lights, unlock doors, etc. This takes about 15 minutes. Annaliese usually disappears to her desk behind the counter and emerges when it's time to dash to their respective schools at 7:50am with a sheet of printer paper covered in letters. This is homework. She gets a prize if she brings in homework. The other day she wrote out the alphabet, for funsies.

This is our future kitchen!!!!!

K. and I have a perfectly beautiful house 3/4 quarters of a mile from our farm. Do we think we should live in our empty beautiful house while attempting to work on things like below? No. Does this make any sense? No. Is it how we roll? Apparently.

This is our Christmas tree! Which has fallen over twice (once the cat, once the kids) and I really need to check the water level, self. 

It is NOT one of the beautiful fir trees the BTC sells because K likes to cut one down and in these here parts, they only have cedars. So we have a cedar. I love the lights.

This is my son. He is heart-breakingly sweet and very punchy and endlessly chatty. This morning he told me he loves me more than sunflowers. And then we started talking about sunflowers, and when I promised we'd plant a bunch this summer, his whole body spasmed in excitement. The reindeer bag is from today's Christmas party at his school, which he attends 8am-12pm. 

 Annaliese had her pre-school's party yesterday. She loves Miss Allison, far left, who is the Real Cindarella. Apparently. Her school runs 8am-11am and Annaliese adores it.

Sitting on the roof with my son. 

Kids and I went to my old garden (I MISS having a garden fiercely) to pick some old woody radishes for the rabbits.

I made the kids hug.

The booty-shaking, however, was all them.

The store is endlessly hectic. This week alone...

I got called in on my day off (AGAIN) because someone was sick. Someone else stole $200 from me. Same person stormed out and quit in a blaze of drama. Someone else sobbed behind the counter. Someone else started working for me. A produce cooler bit the dust. The special Christmas hams arrived, and are not what we thought they would be. I need my old weekend cook to work tomorrow, and then AFTER his shift is over, I have to fire him, because the NEW weekend cook is good to start Sunday (Merry Christmas, right??!). 

But I think I am learning to let it go more than I used to. I have fired people. People have quit. Equipment has failed. Customers have complained. The power has shut off. Employees have brought an amazingly diverse array of drama through the door as reasons not to work, to work, why they can only work x but not y. We have made mistakes. We have lost money. 

We're still here. So, I try to let it go, to go home and be with my family and stop anticipating whatever will go wrong next. 

Tonight, we're going to a Christmas party with good friends. Tomorrow, I'm finishing the kids' new rooms and I AM SO EXCITED. Sunday, we're baking cookies and K and I have a date (!!!) to go see the hobbit. Monday, I work until 3, then it's fondue and family time. Christmas, it's just us and it will be peaceful and happy and the store is closed so NO ONE CAN CALL ME. The day after Christmas, the kids and I pile in the car and drive north to see my mama and my sister and all my Virginian near and dear. 

Lots to be excited about, in other words. 

Peace and love to you and yours!