well, finals are over and I can exhale now which meannnsss....Christmas is here! 

I am amazed at how quickly time has gone by this semester. As excited as I am that graduate school is passing quickly, I also don’t want to completely miss out on 3 years of my life. I hear that as you get older time goes by more quickly.  I remember waiting for Christmas to come when I was a little kid. My dad was a preacher, so we always went to a Christmas Eve service at church. I used to get a “Christmas outfit” every year to wear for the big Christmas Eve night. I would spend months picking it out.

As the service went on, I felt butterflies in my stomach. I would be so excited that I could hardly sit still. I would savor every word of the Christmas carols and I would excitedly wait for the lights to go low and my candle to be lit. “Silent Night” was magical.

I actually used to wake up around 3am in the morning on Christmas Eve night (or I suppose, early Christmas morning) and tiptoe out to the tree using the flashlight I had stowed away when I went to bed that evening. I would comb through the presents, shaking and weighing them in my hands, hoping I could determine if one was my American Girl doll.

Okay, so I still get up and look at the presents. And I still get giddy for the Charlie Brown Christmas c.d. When you are an adult everything gets in the way of the excitement of Christmas, but I don’t want it to. I have 14 days now of pure Christmas bliss (and work, and cleaning, and other stuff). But I am SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!