Two-year-old + ceramic Nativity set + hardwood floors = decapitated wise man.

I’m at my parents’ house now, with my husband, brother and sister-in-law.

Tonight my cousin and his wife and two little girls came over for dinner. We hadn’t previously met either child, they’re both very cute, sweet girls. The baby is five months; her big sister will be three in February.

As a typical two-year-old, she went from room to room playing with everything. All things considered, it went very well — my parents collect glass (paperweights, etc.), so there are lots of breakables in the house!

But when she decided to play with the Nativity scene under the tree … let’s just say it’s looking a little gruesome right now. Said wise man is still worshiping baby Jesus, his head at his feet.

Fortunately, it’s not an heirloom!

The presents are all purchased and wrapped (I gave up on the supplemental item I’d been trying to find the last two days).

I still need to pack a bag for the weekend (we’ll be at my parents’ from Saturday through Monday evening), but that won’t take long. I’ve been gathering presents and things that need to travel.

I’m done with work until the new year (except for the two projects I have to finish by 12/29). I will unfortunately have to work on a day off, but hopefully I can knock it off quickly on the 26th.

Ahh … holidays. It feels good to have everything ready after all the running around I’ve been doing!

Since my husband and I are both off work next week, I’m kind of thinking about planning a last-minute vacation … it’s never to late, right?

But I know what the other things are that I need to buy. One will be very easy, since I know exactly what I’m getting and which store carries it. The other is the difficult item I couldn’t find last night which I may just give up on. If I have time, I will stop at the mall to try one more store tomorrow.

I’ll be off work, but I still have some running around to do, and will be stopping by the office to make sure the office move is going OK.

Oops, one more thing I need to pick up, I wanted to get a little something for my boss since he gave me two bottles of wine. He’s never done that before, and I wasn’t prepared to reciprocate.

Prior to finalizing my shopping tonight, I was trying to buy something for myself. Ann Taylor LOFT has been having a buy one / get one 50% off on everything in the store, plus I have a $25 coupon off a $50 purchase that will be expiring soon. I figured it’d be a good time to buy some jeans that are normally out of my price range (unless they are on sale).

I must have tried on 20 pairs of pants tonight, and the only one that fit well was a dressy tweed pair. They would have been really beautiful, if they didn’t have front pleats. Why did they have to go and ruin a perfectly lovely pair of pants?

So frustrating … so, I’m mad at them right now. Maybe I’ll try to forgive them before my coupon expires. Either that, or I’ll return a pair of pants from them that I haven’t worn yet. They’re on the same receipt that earned me the coupon.

I was a little iffy about those pants, anyway.

Finally, all my hours of wandering around Christmas shopping have paid off!

In my last few shopping adventures, I’ve had a handful of gift ideas and/or people that still needed gifts, spent hours going from shop to shop, but never really found what I was looking for. I’d wind up crossing only one or two people off my list.

Tonight I had three ideas for my husband, brother, and sister-in-law, and no ideas for a number of friends I’m still shopping for. I found the desired item for my brother. I changed my mind and purchased a different item for my sis-in-law (it’s better, anyway). I came up empty-handed for my husband’s item, but it was a smaller gift, anyway. I’m not that concerned. If I don’t find it, I can order online for his birthday next month.

I’m most excited, though, about the gifts for my friends. I was thinking I’d probably end up buying the same thing for everyone (either candles, bath stuff, etc.), but I really wanted to pick out something more personal.

And in my wandering, I started seeing things for each person. Three of them are getting ornaments that fit their personalities. One of them is getting an oil burner that will match her home. There are still two people left on my list, and I have ideas for them.

I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot tonight!

It really isn’t all that time consuming … or, at least it isn’t when I’m not overly inspired.

Like right now. I’m just posting for the sake of posting. I’ll ramble on a few sentences and be done with it.

But whenever I’ve got a topic, I will obsess over it as though I’m writing an essay for a class or a column for a newspaper. I might end up rearranging sentences and editing for hour! Nothing I’ve written is all that long or insightful, either, I can just be very, very picky!

Unlike writing an essay, though, this is fun and not stressful!

Back in college, I used to work for the school newspaper (as did my husband, that’s where we met). We’d have occasional columns on the op/ed page.

As I’m writing blog entries, they often come out like my columns would have. I find a topic (well, here I don’t necessarily have a topic), and casually ramble on until I’ve made my point.

While I’m sure I won’t necessarily post every day once I no longer have any “obligations” (after Holidailies is over), I probably will still write often. There are plenty of slow days with this “forced” posting, but I think it helps me write more freely on the better ones.

Even when I have nothing to say I can still find a way to ramble on for quite some time.

Like today.