“Love Came Down at Chistmas” is the song of the day. Here’s Jars of Clay doing it, complete with gratuitous knitting. You can send that to people as an ecard here. Here it is for guitar.

I learned that song at church yesterday. I’d never heard it before, but I really like it. It’s a very simple little thing, with words by 19th century poet Christina Rossetti. I think it would make a good round, so I would recommend that you sing it that way today, as you finish up your holiday preparations, if that’s what you’re doing.

Yesterday’s music was fun, apart of course from the bells. The bells could definitely have been worse, though, so I won’t complain. I’m up again at 4:19, but I’m trying really hard not to be bad-tempered this week. I’m getting up at this ungodly hour because my husband has been going in to work at 5:00 and I get up to make his coffee. Since he was expecting to be laid off from Thanksgiving on, I’m grateful. I think I did catch up on my sleep a bit this weekend.

12 I also did a bit of knitting. I’ve got the elephant done except for his hat, which is still being knitted.

It isn’t turning out to look like the picture. This isn’t the fault of the pattern, I’m sure.

My menfolks are being pretty scornful about this elephant. My husband pointed out that elephants have four legs and don’t stand upright, which seems unnecessarily pedantic. #1 son said it looks like an anteater, and then my husband suggested that it looked like an armadillo.

He then shared with us the best recipes for cooking armadillos. My husband is incapable of thinking of an animal without considering the best way to cook it, so we let that pass.

12 I also made more Chrismas cookies. These are Cherry Cordial Cookies, and they’re supposed to be made with the cookie press, in which case they’d look like flowers with the cherry in the center.

The cookie press wouldn’t behave itself. However, the dough, when I gave up and pushed it out of the press, was in a nice compact log, so I sliced it up like refrigerator cookies and had tidy half-moons.

Then I addressed Christmas cards.

Really, I think I have just about all my preparations completed. Except that I still haven’t thought of anything for my sister and her family. Since she lives in New Zealand, it may be too late for me to send her anything for Christmas and it may just have to be a New Year’s gift when at last I come up with something. Though I suppose I could send music electronically or something like that. Maybe Amazon ships to NZ.

#2 son cleaned the kitchen (it’s his job, but he doesn’t always do it, so that was good) and #1 son accepted a delegated job from me and did all the tedious parts of the 252 paragraphs assignment, so I can jump in this morning and finish that up. I have a tutoring gig this afternoon.

I’m determined to get to the gym today, and I may take a nap in there somewhere.