'tis the season...

...to be very busy.
I have several very pressing things that I need to take care of ASAP, but instead I'm doing things like this:

This is our elf, "Sneaky Pickle Claus."  My friend gave this to us a couple of years ago, and it's languished in our Christmas boxes until this year when I decided to get him out.  It's an Elf on the Shelf.  The idea is that this elf is watching the children, reporting on behavior back to Santa Claus.  Every day the kids have to find where he is hiding.  I knew the boys wouldn't really go for the "reporting back to Santa" thing, but I thought they would get a kick out of searching for it every day.  There are lots of really adorable ideas online for the Elf on the Shelf (the above idea is not mine, I am so not creative enough for that), and I think it will be fun to do this for the next few weeks.

Other happenings:
Sometime last week, Chrissy got in a fight, and got herself bit by another cat.  We didn't realize it until Saturday night when the bite got infected and started oozing and dripping and being really disgusting.  Poor kitty.  We didn't know what it was at first-- we could only see one puncture wound, but it was big and really, really deep.  I put antibiotic ointment on it, and then we took her into the vet first thing Monday morning.  Turns out it is definitely a bite.  When they shaved the area, you could see the smaller wound where the other tooth went in.  We've been dog-sitting another dog the past few days, and at first I thought she must have bit Chrissy (Sandy has growled and snapped a couple of times at Chrissy).  But the vet said it is definitely a cat bite, and that it happened earlier last week.  There's no way it would have had time to get infected and abscess the way it did in the 24 hours Sandy had been here when I first noticed the bite.  Chrissy will be fine-- the abscess was lanced and drained and she got an antibiotic shot and we brought ointment home to put on it twice a day.  It sure is icky, though.
We finally got our Christmas decorations up!  Someday (maybe) my dream of a beautiful evening of Christmas music and hot chocolate and the family decorating together might come true.  Not this year.  Instead I got annoyed at Ben because I had been trying to get everyone to sit up to the table for dinner for 10 minutes because the food was getting cold, but he wanted to get the Christmas boxes down from the attic first.  So the boys and I ate without him, and meanwhile, since I wasn't supervising the box unloading, he didn't get the right boxes down, so I had nowhere to put the Thanksgiving decorations we took down, and we were missing a couple of boxes of Christmas decorations.  I don't know if Ben got mad at me for being annoyed, or if he just had a lot of work, but in any case he went into the bedroom and closed the door and worked on his laptop.  :-(
Do things my way, and nobody gets hurt, is my motto.  :-)  Too bad it doesn't work that way.
Anyway, the boys and I did most of the decorating and meanwhile Ben made some progress on some work he was doing, and eventually he came out of the bedroom after the boys went to bed in a better mood.  I do love the house being decorated for Christmas, even though it is a lot of work.
Today was Mosey's last speech therapy session for the semester.  Joseph went in and was a control for the same study Mosey tested for last week.  Another $40!!  The boys are getting rich.  I expect really good Christmas presents from them this year.  :-)  So we were there for about 2 1/2 hours, and afterward I wanted to go check out a location where I want to do our family Christmas card pictures.  I'm cutting it seriously short this year, but the weather did not cooperate last weekend for pictures.  Well, 5:30 PM is apparently not a great time to be driving around downtown.  It took us an HOUR to finally get to where we were going, just south of the river, about 30 blocks south of where we were for speech.  That is ridiculous traffic.  The boys were very good sports, though, listening to the final Eragon book on my iPod.  At least getting home was faster, as most of rush hour had dissipated by then.  I dropped off Brigham and Mosey at home and Joseph and I went to Walmart.  I'm trying to figure out what Christmas craft we're going to do for our art class.  Walmart didn't have any clear glass ornament balls!  I was very dismayed.  Still, Joseph and I had a very pleasant mother/son date at Walmart and we managed to find a cart full of stuff we needed even if I couldn't find the one item we actually went to Walmart for in the first place.  Joseph ran into Hobby Lobby for me on the way home and found the right ornaments.  At home again, I supervised flute/violin practicing, sent the boys to bed, and then I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the house, putting away decorations stuff, and helping a friend do some photoshop work on her family Christmas card (note I haven't done any photoshop work on MY family Christmas card yet!), and now it's 12:20 AM and I didn't make any progress on my to-do-list.  The laundry is seriously piling up in the laundry room.  It's all clean, just none of it folded or put away.  My inbox for bills and such on my desk is overflowing and giving me nightmares.  We're gonna get our gas shut off.  I still need to finish arranging the song our family is going to be playing in church on Christmas Day, so that we actually have a chance to PRACTICE before Christmas Day!  I still have to get to the post office to mail off some things my sister accidentally left at our house.  There is a traffic ticket I TRIED to pay back in September which came back because I didn't main in the right paperwork, but meanwhile the right paperwork has disappeared and I have to figure out what to do, but I can't because I have to actually make some phone calls during business hours, or else go to the county courthouse or some other such nonsense, so meanwhile the traffic ticket remains unpaid and I'm paranoid I'm going to be pulled over and hauled off to jail.  I haven't done a single speck of Christmas shopping.  I haven't even made lists for Christmas shopping.  I haven't finished with the family Christmas photo I took for my sister over Thanksgiving, and I haven't taken the family photos I've promised two other families in our ward.  Or mine either, remember?  I need about 2 or 3 uninterrupted days to get all of this stuff done, but those 2 or 3 days are not forthcoming.  So I'm burning both ends of the candle and trying not to make myself sick.  I got 4 hours of sleep last night, and if I went to bed right NOW, I'd get six hours tonight.  But I still have to feed the lizards and the frogs and wash off the kitchen table and locate the cat and put ointment on the cat's leg (which she really loves) and stage another Elf on the Shelf scene and of course finish this really important blog post that definitely represents the best use of my time right now.  So anyway!  Good night!