Back In The Land of the Living!

Thankfully I can report I am 90% back to feeling like myself! Thank God since I make for a horrible sick person. I am way too fidgety to just sit and recupperate, although I did try my very best this week.

I have so much to do with onl 10 days till Christmas left! Here is my agenda for the weekend:

- Wrap Gifts. All of the kiddies items are wrapped. I did that a couple of weeks ago. That way if I needed to bring everything else out, I can. Thankfully I did, since after Leilani's dance class and running errands, we will be taking all the items that haven't been wrapped and turning our family room into Santa's Workshop. I am going to pop in the Grinch movie and letting Leilani and Chris veg out on popcorn while Mike and I wrap all the remaining gifts.

- Chocolate Covered Pretzels. This is a tradition for us. Leilani, Chris and I spend a few hours in the kitchen with a whole bag of pretzel rods and we dip them in melted white chocolate and drizzle them with festive green and red stripes on it. We then bag batches of five sticks in cellophane bags and tie a pretty ribbon on them and give them to our favorite neighbors. We also give a bag to our mailman with his annual Christmas card and tip.

- Gingerbread Cookies. I admit I cheat at this one. Pilsbury sells a delish couple of sheets of ready to cut out cookie dough, so all I have to do is flour the cutting mat and we're good to go. We made a batch of sugar cookies not too long ago, but we enjoy the time cutting them out so much that we usually end up making a couple of more batches just for the fun of it.

- Supermarket run for baking supplies. Last year, Leilani and I made Oatmeal cookies. This year I am venturing out a bit and making 3 different kinds of cookies. Thanks to a few tried and true recipes my good friend Jenn gave me, I am going to set out to bake some more decadent cookies. This means we have to go to the supermarket to pick up our supplies. Tomorrow is calling for another blast of nasty weather, so this will definitely be a perfect day to whip out our aprons and get to work.

- One more gift! Grandma Auri is still toting a 35MM camera we bought her for Christmas 8 years ago. The poor thing is extremely outdated and noisy. We figured we will get her a more modern one. Personally I would have loved to get her a digicam, but she is not computer savvy and says she doesn't have to the patience to learn. So after an extensive search for a 35MM camera (who knew they are almost extinct!) we found a store that has a small selection of them. We will be taking a rude to Neptune (the town, not the planet :o) ) to pick one out especially for her.

Of course I have to take breaks to relax so as not to relapse with the dreaded flu, which means this will all take longer than it would if I were running at 100%. The great part is no matter how long it takes, it will be time happily spent with FAMILY!