It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

The holiday season is getting underway for my family!  Yesterday Caraline and I had our last day of school for the semester (WOO HOO) and after some very stressful mid-terms had a fun party with the 7th and 8th grade classes.  As part of our last day we presented Shakespeare projects which we had been working on for a few weeks.  I'll let Caraline tell you about her project herself, but for mine, I memorized an excerpt from The Taming of the Shrew - if you've read it, it's Katherina's speech at the end - and my mom made me an AWESOME Renaissance-period dress.  It was definitely a labor of love, but it was so impressive.



Here's a pic of it - sorry it's so big.  The pic doesn't even do justice to all the little details in the vest and blouse!  I actually wore it around school the whole day, and most people didn't know why I was wearing it but it still got a lot of complements.

A couple weeks ago we got our Christmas tree and decorated and everything.  It's gearing up to be a fun holiday season.  This year I've been inspired to try to bless as many people as possible.  Yesterday after school, in Kroger I decided to treat myself to a vanilla bean Frappucino from Starbuck's - yum.  I didn't have enough cash on me so I asked the cashier girl to check if there was any money on my gift card.  I was pretty sure there was, but I just wanted to make sure.  She said she couldn't check it at that register, but she would give me the drink for free!  I felt so blessed as she asked me what size I wanted; "Small," I replied.  She actually gave me a large!  What a blessing.  She was so sweet and cheery to customers, even if they weren't buying anything at Starbucks and just walking by.  She was such an inspiration.  I've read a couple blog posts from people about how they're doing Random Acts of Kindness during Christmastime, little things like giving the garbage men breakfast (I'd definitely never thought about that before!), leaving a little gift in the mailbox for the mailman, or deciding to pay for the person behind you at the grocery store.  On my teenage girl's babysitting income, I'm sure there's lots of those things I can't afford to do on my own, but there are lots of things I could do anyway.  And not all blessings come in material form.  The best blessing you can give someone is showing them Jesus' joy. 

I hope to blog more about my adventure's this Christmas.  And I am still planning on continuing my 1,000 Things I'm Thankful For Challenge, I'm sure it will take a while to complete, but there are so many things I have to be thankful for I don't think it will be too hard.