Last year, my Christmas spirit was delayed and all things Christmas-y followed suit. We got there eventually, but it did feel touch and go for a while – particularly because most of the presents that I had ordered in the middle of the month still hadn’t arrived by December 23, necessitating a hasty re-order (thank you Amazon Prime!) and some running around to find anything that was in stock locally. But, it’s not like I usually finish wrapping presents until Christmas Eve anyway …

This year, the Christmas spirit was willing, but the body wasn’t able – we were just too dang busy! We finally picked up our tree around the middle of the month, but ended up driving to the local building supply store, rather than out to our usual tree farm, since we heard that the pickings were already slim at the farm. We ended up with a shorter tree than usual, made even shorter by the fact I had to cut a few inches and an entire row of branches off the bottom since it wasn’t sucking up water for the first few days. We told the kids that just left lots of room underneath it for presents. Although present buying was also a bit delayed this year. And then there was the last-minute buying Christmas Eve for an unexpected recipient. And the last-minute buying Boxing day because I somehow missed buying a present. Busy, I tell you. Busy.

At least I had managed to decorate most of the rest of the house before then. And our cards went out on time!

We missed the Christmas Eve service because we were just too exhausted to go. I was a little sad about that, but we made it work with a Christmas movie on the couch in our Christmas pajamas. And I continued my tradition of wrapping the last presents after the kids went to bed. 😀 Although this year it was not because they arrived late, it was because the kids would have guessed what the presents were if they had gone under the tree any earlier.

But our Christmas surprise was not that everything actually got done on time. Our Christmas surprise was the two baby guinea pigs that we woke up to on December 27th. We had adopted two guinea pigs at the beginning of November and I had started suspecting a few days before Christmas that one might be pregnant. I’m still a bit annoyed that the people we adopted the original two from hadn’t separated their male and female guineas properly, but I will admit that it was exciting to see those two tiny furry faces peeking out from under the momma guinea. We need to wait a little longer to see if the newbies are boys or girls and then figure out what we’re going to do, but I highly suspect that our family just grew by two.

The nuggets as newborns and at four days old.