I am amazed and overjoyed! One, my apartment is almost clean. This Friday I made a bunch of cookies for Saturday, which was the cookie making class I gave for our church's Christmas open house with storytelling and various themed classes. It was a whirlwind - one hour to make and decorate cookies in cooking show style (i.e. without an oven, things magically appearing, etc.,). After that I dashed off to a youth meeting to follow up the EJE conference we had a couple weeks ago and arrived back home around 11:30pm with my car poorly parked, knowing that I would later have to move it and find a legal spot (which I did around 1:30am). Suffice it to say, my house was a disaster. So, it's nice to have that mostly done. I LOVE when my house is clean!

Two, last night a friend and I bought tickets to Mallorca for a couple days between New Year's and Kings' Day! Mallorca is one of the islands to the SE of Spain and somehow we found great tickets and a hotel that costs 65 Euros (for 3 days, the total). AND a good friend of mine is going to be in Paris for business and I found cheap tickets, so I finally get to go back to Paris for the weekend (which I'd been hoping to do this Christmas/New Year sometime).

Three, I've been listening to Handel's Messiah, which I love, and looking up the passages that go with each movement (although the lyrics are straight from the Bible) and enjoying reflecting on the meaning of Christmas.

Four, I was pleasantly awakened this morning at 5:30am to SNOW!!! It was beautiful!!! It has now pretty much melted and the rain that came latter didn't help, but it was nice for the few hours it lasted.