Christmas is coming!

I continue to not do a good job posting here.  But life continues to be a bit crazy with Christmas coming fast and work continuing full steam ahead.  I am now up to 6 in-person tutoring clients as I have trouble saying no.  But I'm thinking that a few of them will drop off after this semester ends, and 2-3 of them aren't every week.  Tutor.com continues full boar as I have 9 mentors and over 75 tutors, so I am responsible for over 325 tutors overall!  I billed over $1k to them for November's work, which is nice but also means I'm working a lot.  I also spent countless hours with At&t getting our internet sorted out over the past 3 weeks.  But I can now say that it all seems fixed and they didn't charge us for any of it, including an upgraded wireless router.

I am being sure to spend time focusing on the kids and our family as much as possible.  We are spending nights in front of the fire, often reading various versions of the Christmas story.  Inspired by this I did get the kids a new nativity set that they can play with.  I want them to be sure to understand the true reason for the season and Carolyn is definitely getting it.  We started our baking last week as well, with chocolate chip and candy cane.  Saturday was the annual cookie baking with my in-laws, while Jon and I went shopping.  We happened to get James his twin bed and he loves it.  We already took down the crib!  Tuesday we made toffee, which will be replaced by something else in future years.  Today we went downtown and enjoyed lunch by the tree at Macy's in the Walnut Room.  What an amazing experience for the kids each year.

I feel like the kids are really being impacted by the onslaught of wheat and I noticed an increase in pain in joints.  So I ordered flour to make a gluten free mix and will be using that in any recipes that don't require rising dough.  We're starting tomorrow with oatmeal cookies, wish us luck!  I'm hoping that Jon won't notice the difference and plan to eliminate all wheat from our home beginning in January.  So I will begin figuring out how to make some breads that actually can hold sandwhiches!

I'm looking forward to the next few weeks and we finish the lead up to Christmas.  I have many ideas of things to do with the kids and I plan to enjoy just being together as a family.  It is wonderful to finally feel like we have all we need financially because we have been very blessed by God.