Gripped with Excitement

I'm bouncing off the walls with excitement.

I don't know if my reasons would justify this state of being for everyone, but they seem to be working for me. Here are some of them:

• Christmas. In 6 weeks and 5 days. YAY!!!!!!! This is more exciting because I am on top of the Christmas shopping, YAY!!! :) And we are going to NSW to spend Christmas with all James' family down there for the first time, so I get to have pre-Christmas with my family up here, yay!! :) (I'm totally going to pretend it's Christmas Day! And then I get 2 of them! :))
• I also get to visit Beth & Robbie in Sydney for a few days at the end of the trip, YAY!! :)
• And we are going to James' mission reunion in Sydney, yay!! (more for him, but, happy husband happy ... life? And wife... It'll be fun for both of us, anyway :))
• Elders Boliver in Japan are doing GREAT :)
• Maggie and Ana are soooooo cool :) I seem to have been out of the house so much lately, yesterday and today at home with these girls have been so wonderful!
  
• James is finishing a big prac, tomorow, his final exam on Thursday, and 1 more assignment next Wednesday. Then he is OURS again!!! He'll go back to work, but he won't have any school homework until FEBRUARY, YAY!!! :) It feels like Ana hasn't bonded with him at this age as much as Maggie was able to cause he's been so busy, so I'm excited for them to be able to spend more time together especially :)
• Ana's new Bumbo arrived this morning, yay! Maggie has been sitting in it all morning. She loves it. It's a little odd that she's still fitting into it easily at almost 2, and Ana will probably get to fat for it before she does!
• Ana is deliciously chubby - she's just so healthy and beautiful! :) And such a sweetheart, we love her. Cooking up a pot of potatoes to mash and freeze for her today, bring on SOLIDS!!!! :)
• Netball tonight - I love playing.
• Mum and Dad getting there with their house to put it on the market! This one's mixed excitement and 'you can't sell our house!!!!' :p
• We get our two absent sisters back early next year!!! - Beth's coming up from Sydney (with Robbie, and her baby belly), and Tammy will be DONE with EFY!!! After 2 years I never thought it would happen! Pray for not floods in January, yeah?! :)
• JACEY was born on Friday, and she's so sweet and beautiful!! - Yay for gorgeous nieces and nephew! Jessima does SUCH a good job :)
• Bethany finds out whether her little soon-to-be firstborn is a boy or a girl in 3 weeks! YAY!!! :) (think female thoughts! :))
• I'm making roast for dinner tonight - that means I won't have to cook for at least one night after tonight. Bless leftovers!!! :)
• Maggie's talking all day long. SHe's so sweet and fun, we LOVE her!!! :)
• I have been playing with my early Christmas present from James :) It's a Franklin/Covey planner. I have big goals and plans for next year to be a super efficient Mum/Housewife/Person, and this is part of my master plan. James has let me have it now cause the earlier I start the better the lead-in to my year of efficiency. I am LOVING it. I am so pumped! And the binder I got? Totally cute :) You'll hear more about this later.
• Next year James and I have tickets to all the Harvest Rain Shows - I won them, YAY!!! :)
• For my birthday, Tammy gave me tickets to go and see Tim McGraw & Faith Hill in concert with her next year, and Jessima is taking me to the Power of Mums retreat that's coming to Australia in March!! WOW!! 2 HUGE presents, and both happening in March! SO exciting to look forward too!!! :)
• For HER birthday, I'm taking Tammy to go and see 'Annie' in April!! By July I'm going to have been to like 7 or 8 shows/concerts!! So many fun outings!!! :)
• In January, Jessima's parents are going away and we're able to go up and house-sit for them if we'd like to. They live in Caloundra - one of my favourite places in the whole world!!! I hope we can sort it around James' work - it's a happy year that includes a good Caloundra visit!! :)
• I was thinking about houseboats the other day. I love them. I want to go on another houseboat holiday with our extended family, if we can find a fabulous big one. I can't wait! :)
• I just sent off 4 birthday cards - 3 belated :S But at least now I'm up to date! Hopefully we can stay this way!
• I just got the pictures from my fabulous surprise party and Tammy's fabulous Halloween party off her camera, yay!
• I have been to some sales recently. I LOVE sales.
• I made a new slow cooker recipe the other day, a chicken and potato curry. It was aMAZing, and gave us days of leftovers!! The best bit? I don't like curry at all!!! I just made it cause James likes it and I've never made it before... But I loved this one!!
• It's our Anniversary in 2 weeks and 1 day. I LOVE James! :) And we've nearly been married 4 years! SUCH old timers :) Every other year we've gone away for our Anniversary, but this year we managed to go to Aunty Leah's fabulous wedding in Adelaide instead. Maybe we'll go out to dinner or something. When the tax return came in I bought a few cheap nice meals at restaurants with Spreets, so maybe we'll use one of those :)
• Today I checked the mail, and we got the Bumbo, some little nappy covers I ordered for Ana a week or two ago, an engagement party invite, and a camera cord (I lost mum's :S But found a replacement well priced online thank goodness). End of mail. NO BILLS!!!! :) And nothing awful or unexpected. Lately I'm kind of nervous to check the mail, so that was exciting.
• James helped me run a weekly grocery shop last night. I don't have to run out to the shops anymore this week, yay!
• Maggie and I got up early this morning (definitely her idea!) and made pancakes for James! Yay :)
• Yesterday morning I woke up at 4:30am and realised Ana hadn't fed! So in my haste to make sure she was alive I woke her up and fed her. This morning I didn't feed her till Maggie and I got up just before 6. Awesome :)
• I borrowed some of Mum and Dad's CD's and talk tapes. I LOVE listening to them around the house.
• I am getting a tiny bit more up to date with my housework now that I'm home and focused on being efficient :) BIG yay!! :)
• I am not humongously pregnant!! I don't know how long it will take me to stop being excited about that one..
• Maggie's cold is finally clearing up, and none of the rest of us caught it, YAY!!! :)
• Mums & Bubs Christmas BBQ here Saturday - we have been so much less regular this year with all being pregnant and sick and having second babies, so it's nice to get together, and with our husbands too! Last week at Amy's house the toddlers were playing on Elijah's awesome new outdoor equipment. These ex-bubs are so big and wonderful! And we sat on the back veranda with the second babies :) It was nice. These girls have been such a wonderful and unexpected support base and friendship group since we started meeting. I'm so grateful for them! And Maggie loves them too :)
• I've been completely useless helping my parents with getting their house ready to sell (this isn't one of the things that's exciting.). We go over and I seem to make more mess with the girls than I'm cleaning up, and spend all my time worrying about them making mess and feeding them, etc. But I married James, who has been a MUCH bigger help. I'm so glad I married someone so willing to help and hard working!!! :) And who can' TOTALLY lift a fridge by himself (only single door though, right, Tammy?) lol.
• I am teaching a lesson at church on Sunday. I'm teaching Relief Society. I've never taught adults in my life, so it's kind of scary. But it's EXCITING because I have not taught for a loooong time outside the girls, and being a teacher, I've kind of been craving it. So it'll be fun to prepare a lesson. There'll be visual aids. - I don't think I'll ever let go of some of those primary school teaching bits inside of me.
• I have a treadmill. I know, I've had it for a long time, but I love it. I love using it. I love the results. I love my treadmill!
• Maggie's currently putting Elmo in the Bumbo. I keep walking in on her sitting at her little 4 seater table and chairs talking to the bears who she's placed on the 3 other chairs. I LOVE that she's becoming creative and imaginative and having so much fun playing alone as well as with other children.
• Speaking of which, Maggie and Jordan are AWESOME friends. They LOVE getting together. I don't know about Jordan, but for Maggie, I never see her play the way she plays with him, with anyone else. They just seem to 'work'. Like they read each other's little minds and know exactly what they're both going to do, and then they're off! They run around screaming, jump on and over things, into things, under things, with things, they run into each other, and they giggle the whole time. I love it :)

See wouldn't you TOTALLY be excited too?! So many reasons... :)

I'm off to clean up the traces of pancake evidence, put the roast on, and bounce off the walls a little more. Maggie'll probably participate. She loves to get excited just for the sake of it too. We'll probably have a dancing marathon while we work - we're good like that :)

Just turned around to see she's already started on the folding. What a helpful soul :)

xo