Celebrate the Small Things- Preparing for Christmas

It's Friday Celebration time with our dear host, Viklit.  As always, click the link to sign up and see the full list of all the awesome bloggers participating.

This week my celebrations are:

Christmas Cards!  That little guy is my dog, Buddy, and he's staring daggers at me for putting him in that reindeer costume.  One of the best parts of having a freakishly adorable and tiny little guy like him is that you can torture him with ridiculous costumes and there's not a damned thing he can do about it.  (I'm pretty sure there's a special place in hell reserved for people like me.)  At any rate, I walked into the post office on Wednesday with a stack of those cards and a tower of boxes containing home-baked Christmas cookies (which take me forever to make but are so worth it) destined for places all over the US.  Friends and relatives are going to be greeted by that when they fetch their mail over the next few days.  And that makes me giddy.

Christmas Parties!  We had our usual potluck at work yesterday and I ate so much I spent the rest of the afternoon in a near coma.  Tomorrow is the company-wide Christmas party where I will again be eating way too much.  And in case all that doesn't put me into a diabetic coma we've got our karate potluck scheduled for tomorrow night, complete with the most ridiculously fun version of Pollyanna gift-giving I've ever participated in.  Awesome.

Christmas!  It's only a few short days away and I will be spending those days wrapping gifts, baking up a storm and trying to soak in every bit of the wonderfulness this time of year can offer.  I hope to take a brief break to go see the new Hobbit (cause how freakin' amazing is that gonna be?!) but other than that I'm in full-on holiday mode.  The key to this time of year, I've learned, is to be as present in the moment as humanly possible.  I know that's a good thing to practice in general, but especially now when things have the potential to pass by in a whirlwind.  So I will do my absolute best to pick up all the sights, sounds, smells and feelings of this wonderful and wonderous holiday, and to be grateful for every single minute of it.

Happy Holidays!

(P.S.  Don't forget to hop on the web Chrstmas Eve for the 50 States of Pray group posting hosted by the amazingly thoughtful Mark Koopmans.  If there's anything to put you in the Christmas spirit, that's it!)