Two weeks

In two weeks I will be on a plane for Mississippi...in fact if I move my clock ahead two hours, I'll be about 40 minutes from getting off the plane in New Orleans two weeks from now (seeing as how it's 11:15am as I write this). I'm eager, anxious and happy to say that I'm also fully funded! Yay!! Anything that comes in now is icing on the cake...or building materials.

In the meantime there are things to be done in the next two weeks. Train Guy and Adventure Boy will be joining Yo Momma and I in a Christmas Tree hunt tomorrow afternoon. Train Guy turns 6 next week, so there's a cake to be made...not gonna tell you what it is yet. K, Meg and I are heading back to the 80's and hanging with The Judds in a week or so. The church Christmas Celebration (big concerty thing) happens a week from Sunday. The youth group is going Ice Skating. There's a Christmas party to attend, a couple of breakfasts to go to, a few meet-ups with folks, oh and I need to make sure all the computer stuff is together for all the worship services between now and the 26th. Did I mention just regular work stuff? Didn't even talk about getting any presents together for Christmas Day. Eh, it will all work out.

But really, what I'm trying to do right now is slow down. Seems strange, huh? The next couple of weeks are going to go really fast. Mississippi will come and go. Christmas will come and go. In my busyness and tendency to so narrowly on things, I miss the big picture. I miss seeing the good stuff come out, so this season, I want to slow down and focus, to prepare for what is coming, to enjoy the moments and savor this time.

A few years back I bought an Advent Devotional Book by the RevGalBlogPals. I was being cheap and ordered the downloadable version and never really used it. This year I decided to print out the pages, put it in a binder and read it. I'm glad I did.

I also bought a book from another blogger...who is now no longer blogging, seems to be a theme these days...that I'm planning on taking on the Mississippi trip. We read it at the end of the evening last year and I'm gonna do it again this year. It's called "A Christmas Story You've Never Heard" by Gordon Atkinson. I love his retelling of the story of Christ's birth...I may have to buy the Shepherd's story this year.

Just today I found an online Advent Calendar that is going to become part of my daily routine, this season. All things to help me savor the time of this season, to focus on the big picture and to slow down a little.