I spent most of the weekend shopping (groceries, but I still had to fight Walmart holiday crowds, so it counts), baking, addressing cards. Also church and preparing to teach my co-op classes today. It was mostly good, but I am So, so ready for our holiday break (Travis still hasn't finished the assignments he has to have done before his break begins, but I'm sure he'll finish them tomorrow!)!
Friday afternoon our priest's wife came over and worked with Travis on perfecting the slide show he'd already put hours into for the Christmas pageant. When she left, she told him it looked great, and that, between the copy on her computer and the copy on Travis's computer, she knew things would go off without a hitch. Only apparently she changed her mind on Saturday, because when we got to church on Sunday, Travis dressed in his spiffy blazer, all proud and looking forward to running the "slide" show, we found that she'd had an older teenage boy re-do the whole thing on his computer. So he showed the pictures and Travis sat on the floor at the priest's wife's feet and pretended to be a member of her Sunday School class being told the Christmas Story (It was a story within a story thing. Very clever, but we didn't appreciate it as much as we would have if we hadn't been feeling bitter and angry.). The performance was well received and I was very proud of how well Travis handled his disappointment, but I was also angry with our normally wonderful "Mrs. Priest" for being such an idiot. Oh well!
Otherwise, though, the weekend was good. I got all the cookies/candy made, and Ed and Katie packed the ones that needed packing. We had enough stamps for my Christmas cards (yay!), and the dinner I cooked for my parents on Saturday night did not upset my dad's digestion (always an accomplishment!). And I finished reading Larklight in time to lead the discussion today, and was also ready to teach my writing class (we learned "refutation") and my logic class (the bifurcation fallacy). Not so shabby, eh?
Today was the last co-op meeting until January 9th (that sounds so far away!), and it was fun! The kids were all in holiday moods but still seemed to enjoy our lessons. Katie got to make salt dough crafts in one of her classes (thank goodness for crafty moms), and Travis played a quiz game in history that he really enjoyed. We bought pizzas (my kids get Really excited about purchased pizzas, which is, I guess, what happens when your father used to have his own pizza place and makes an excellent homemade pizza!) and some of the moms brought cookies and candy, so I guess it was like a Christmas party!
Anyway, to get to the point of my blog title, after my writing class I snuck out and went to the post office to mail my cards and packages. And there was No Line. No other customers at all, actually! I remember going to the post office in Florida before Christmas and waiting in line for an hour to mail packages, and here, the Monday before Christmas, I had the post office entirely to myself. You'll pardon me while I gloat for a minute?Okay, done gloating. So, on the way to the post office I had noticed that my return address labels were peeling off. The postal employee was calm and happy, and was quite delighted to put some scotch tape on my return labels to keep them from falling off. While he was taping them for me, he noticed Ed's name and address, pardoned himself for a moment, and went to the back and fetched a card from Ed's Aunt Bette, who had neglected to put a stamp on the envelope! Then our postal delivery guy, who was hanging around the post office (there is a reason we never have mail before 3:00 in the afternoon) saw me and brought out a couple packages. The shopping isn't great, but here are some very nice things about living in a small town! (And actually, our community has become too small to have its own post office, so our mailing address is that of the slightly larger community nearby, which makes it even more impressive when the postal guy recognizes a name and address and connects it with a card in the "undeliverable" heap!). Nothing like a friendly postal employee right before Christmas (one who doesn't stand a chance of receiving a cash "thank you") to restore your faith in the basic decency of mankind!
And, as a special Christmas bonus for you, here are a couple pictures of Emma which Travis took the other day...
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