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Hello, Reader.

Are you savoring the season yet? Are your days merry and bright? Or do you feel like you'll have to sprint from now until the 25th to squeeze in everything you still need to do. (I'm presently vacillating between the two, which is why this newsletter's a day late again this week. Ha!)

If you're in the season-savoring camp, read on for some other fun holidays to celebrate between now and New Year's. 🥳

If you're in the wild-sprinters group, skip the following link list, take a deep breath, and pray that God will calm and quiet your heart and help you accomplish the essentials and ignore the rest. ❤️

Either way, I hope all your holiday celebrations will be meaningful and infused with joy!

Free resources for you this week:

• Dec 6 - St. Nicholas Day: a good time to teach your kids about the original Santa Clau​
• Dec. 7 - Letter Writing Day: fun ideas for writing a Christmas update folks will want to read
• Dec. 13 - Official Lost & Found Day: read my favorite lost and found story from childhood
• Dec. 20 - Go Caroling Day: here's everything you need for an old fashioned caroling party
• Dec. 23 - National Christmas Movie Marathon Day: take our movie trivia tests after each
• Dec. 26 - National Candy Cane Day: you can even use candy canes to share the gospel​

What I'm reading this week:

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It took me several months to get through Michael Greger’s massive tome, How Not to Diet. He originally intended the book to be an examination and discussion of the safety and effectiveness of the most popular diet trends and weight-loss fads, but — in typical Greger fashion — it ballooned into so much more than that. What resulted was some of the most compelling, science-based suggestions for achieving healthy and sustained weight loss you’ll ever find, including 21 cutting-edge tweaks to accelerate and multiply your weight loss in simple and easily achievable ways. He even created a free app to help readers keep track of these suggestions. I've already begun implementing most of them. Stand by for total body transformation. 🍎 ​ ​

Progress on last week's goals:

The only things I marked off last week's to-do list all centered around Thanksgiving: ✅ visiting with extended family, ✅ cooking for a bunch of people, ✅ getting a group photo, ✅ giving thank you gifts to co-op teachers, and ✅ completing four more pages in my devotional journal.

I've taken such long and frequent naps since the last of our out-of-town company left that the remainder of my goals remained quite neglected, which is why they're back on my list this week. 📋

Personal goals for this week:

• address & mail Christmas cards
• update Christmas print pack(s)
• finalize itinerary for our annual family trip to San Antonio ​
• stitch some new Christmas ornaments with Abby
• put out last of Christmas decorations
• complete 4 more pages in my advent journal