All done!

My talk in church is done!  Now I can enjoy Christmas.  :-)  Just kidding, I have been enjoying it all month long, but it is a big relief to have it done.
I am all better now, too, which is a bigger relief!  After a miserable day on Thursday, I finally started feeling more human on Friday, and risked eating solid food yesterday, and I think I'm back to normal today. 
One side benefit to having a stomach virus all week (hey, you have to look on the bright side, right?) is that the pesky 4 lbs I've been fighting with for a couple of months is finally gone.  Now to keep it off during the season of Christmas calories.  :-)
I think my talk went well.  I really wrestled with it this week.  My brain was sluggish and I was feeling distinctly uninspired.  I wrote about 6 different opening paragraphs, discarding all of them, before finally settling on the framework of my talk, and then it finally flowed.  I used Mr. Krueger's Christmas (which is here in full-length, although not full-resolution).  There are always things I wish I had done differently after the fact, but all-in-all I think I am satisfied, and I think Ben and I are off the hook for speaking on holidays for a while, now.  I spoke on Easter a couple of years ago (with the Stake Presidency there, yikes!), then Ben spoke on Thanksgiving Sunday 2 years ago, and then me again today for our Christmas program.  I put the talk on my Google documents if anyone wants to read it.  I think it came across better than it reads, but maybe I'm delusional.  :-)
OK, that's more than enough egotistical navel-gazing for a while.

Other big news from the week:  Mosey lost one of his two front teeth!  He looks sooo cute.  Although I kind of hate it, too, because it means he'll be getting his grown-up teeth in, and as soon as that happens, he won't look like a little kid anymore...  :-(  Yes, I'm one of those selfish mommies that would love to keep her kids little forever.  Well, maybe not forever, but I really wish I could just transport myself back in time whenever I wanted to, and hold my little babies again.  But since this is not a possibility, I guess I just have to wish they never would grow up.  :-)  See, since they're not grown yet, I don't know what I'm missing.  But I do remember them little, and boy do I ever miss those little squirts...

He's just so cute!  Here he is ready for church this morning, dressed up in his Christmas church outfit.  He can't resist sticking his tongue through that hole!  I just know I'm going to look back at these pictures a few years from now and wish like anything I could go back and squeeze those cute little cheeks of his and scoop him up on my lap and tickle him until he squeals.  So let's just stop time right here, shall we?

He wasn't that much of a cutie yesterday, though.  I took him and Joseph to Target to buy a birthday present for a friend, and he was a PILL!  :-)  There is a certain toy he really wants (a remote control tarantula, of all things, a toy I worry might get played with a few times and then forgotten about, but then again Mosey does a pretty darn good job of playing with *all* his toys, and it has been on his list for quite a long time, ever since he saw it in a Sky Mall magazine on some flight or other) and he was bound and determined to buy it for himself yesterday.  Well, Christmas is a week away, and his birthday is only a couple of weeks after that, and it's just not the right time for him to be buying *himself* toys!  I tried to explain this to him, and you'd *think* he'd get the hint, right?  I mean, what kid wants to spend his hard-earned money to buy himself something there's a good chance he's going to get as a present in only a few days?!  But never underestimate Mosey's desire for immediate gratification...  I did make him put it back, and then he spent the next 20 minutes running away from me in Target.  Little snickerdoodle.  Worse than a snickerdoodle, really.  Do you know how hard it is to capture a 6 year old in Target who doesn't want to be caught?  Especially when you're on a stupid ride-on-cart that can only go about 3 miles an hour, and has a really wide turning radius, and you're chasing a little imp who scurries hither and thither up and down aisles and among clothing racks?  Well, it's really, really hard.  I even had Joseph with me running around trying to chase him.  I thought I could use Joseph to flush Mosey out where I could head him off, but there are just way too many places for a kid to run in Target.  I finally got fed up and went to the check-out line.  Joseph was able to get near enough to Mosey to say loudly enough for him to hear that we were leaving now, no matter if he came or not.  I guess Mosey decided we were a little too far from home for him to want to try to walk, so he followed us out of the store.  Little scoundrel.  So now I'm not sure what I should do about that stupid tarantula.  I don't want to get it for him after pulling that trick!  I'll have to think about it...
I know there was other important stuff that happened this last week, but I was too self-absorbed in being sick to remember anything else at the moment, so that's it for tonight.