I’m currently at that point in the festive season where the to-do list looks overwhelming, there don’t appear to be quite enough hours available in the day and I’m feeling somewhat overstretched. The calendar for December is the emptiest it’s ever been and yet it feels like the run-up to Christmas has been busier this year than usual.
I’ve been involved with streaming online services with church this year and have a new appreciation for how hard ministers must work at this time of year! I have three services to edit video content for over the next few days and a fourth that will need video editing between Christmas and New Year. Hubby does most of our video editing. However, he’s rather snowed under at the moment work-wise so I’m trying to do what I can myself to ease some of the load on him.
On the plus side, the Christmas tree is finally up, the cards have all been sent (well all that are going to be sent anyway!) and most of the presents have been wrapped. I’ve just got a few days of craziness to get through before I can take a deep breath and hopefully find some time to relax! Christmas this year will just be the four of us and I’m looking forward to being able to have some quality family time together, although Jessica will be very much missed as always. Christmas can be quite a tough time for us without Jessica but we’ll get through as best we can.
Things that have made me smile over the last couple of weeks
- Sophie making a Christingle during her Girls’ Brigade Zoom session.
- Managing to have one festive day out at the Chiltern Open Air Museum’s Christmas event.
- Being able to make beautiful Christmas card photos which feature all three of my children thanks to the magic of Photoshop.
- Getting to see Father Christmas when he did his rounds of the local roads.
- Sophie’s joy at being able to join in with the church virtual games night. She impressed me with some of her drawings while playing Pictionary.
- Being able to have a semi-virtual parade service at church. It was so lovely to see some of the people from Girls’ Brigade that we haven’t seen in nine months. We’re back to online only services now though.
- Making a tissue paper ‘stained glass’ nativity scene with Sophie to go in our window.
- Watching Sophie decorate Jessica’s little wooden Christmas tree. We were given it for Jessica’s first Christmas and had it next to her cot on PICU so it’s a rather special little tree. Sophie took a lot of care over hanging the little wooden decorations on it.
- Watching Thomas arranging his number cubes into odds and evens which completely amazed me. I know he loves his numbers but that is very impressive for a little boy whose not yet two and a half.
- Seeing Jessica’s little face pop up on my screen when looking at the research page on Action Medical Research’s website.
- Seeing the Christmas lights on some of the houses in our local area.
Oh no! It sounds like you have been busy, no wonder you are feeling overstretched.
Good job with streaming the online services.
The picture you did on Photoshop is wonderful. I saw it on Facebook and it did make me smile and what a clever boy Thomas is with his blocks. x
It’s certainly been a very busy run-up too Christmas. Hopefully I can stop and relax soon! I’m so pleased with how the photo of the children came out.
I’ve only edited small videos so I can imagine how time consuming your work is for the church. How clever is Thomas with his number blocks, and Sophie looks so dedicated to decorating that tree and making her Cristingle. I think your Christmas cards including Jessica are beautiful. I know you must miss her so much and holidays make things more difficult. I wish you all the blessings of the season to you all and I hope you get some peace. xx
Thank you Anne. I’m glad we can still include Jessica in cards although it was a little harder this year now that Sophie has overtaken her x