(set it to the tune of "Jingle Bells," and there you go!)

Bryan was home for Wednesday and Thanksgiving, but the duty schedule had him back at the station for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Now that we're a day away from December, I feel like I need to kick it into high gear. All of our family is spread across the country, which means we need to shop, wrap and ship in plenty of time for packages to get to their destination. As you might imagine, the new job takes up a fair bit of my time, and shopping with a toddler takes...oh...about ten times as long as shopping alone.

Despite a cold and 100+ degree fever, Zach and I headed out in the afternoon on friday and got quite a bit accomplished. None of the shopping we were planning to do involved the early morning doorbusters, so we were able to hit the stores after things had calmed down a bit. We also went out Saturday morning, but weren't quite as successful. This morning, a tip that a store was going to have a hard-to-find item had Zach and I out the door at 7:15. We were able to get the item, which is a huge thing to cross off our list. Unfortunately, my shopping karma seems to be petering out...several of our stops today yielded no luck.

In addition to the shopping, I've been working on wrapping, but I have to do that after Zach goes down for a nap or goes to bed because he's not very patient about watching me do something he can't participate in.

I think it's going to be a hectic few weeks until Christmas.

Bryan had quite the eventful weekend himself. On Friday, he saved someone's life. Here's what he said about it: "A man was out walking, and he fell off a rock into the 55 degree water. He was struggling and fighting the large swells (waves) for about 20 minutes by the time we got there. He was too close to the rocks for us to do a normal along side recovery, so we had to put our surface swimmer in the water to recover him. We got him onboard and did basic first aid (treating for hypothermia, he was really cold and tired), brought him back to the pier where EMS was waiting for him." Pretty exciting stuff, and I'm sure it was a great feeling to save someone's life. I'm sure he'll post in more detail on his own blog.

(for JENNY)

Yeah, okay, so I'm a slacker. But this time I have a good excuse. I started the new job this past week, and that's pretty much consumed my life, or at least the parts of my life that aren't already consumed with being a wife and mom.

The two weeks before I started were full of prep work - assembling a new work wardrobe, prepping Zach for preschool, working on developing a business plan and brushing up on audiology stuff specific to my new position. Oh yeah, and caring for a baby, a husband, a dog and a house. Also, the battery on my car died (yeah, the car is a whopping three years old. VW uses the crappiest factory batteries I've ever seen, and I feel justified in saying that since this is my second Passat and I had the same issue with my last Passat) and I had to get a pedicure. Priorities, you know.

I'm trying to get my feet under me, learning the ins and outs of this particular practice and the things that are specific to the way they do things. Audiology is fundamentally the same wherever you practice, but there are always aspects that vary from place to place. To add to the challenge, both of the other audiologists in the practice have either been out or working a very limited schedule due to medical reasons, so I've had to fend for myself in terms of learning the equipment and workflows.

Zach is adjusting to preschool. We really like his teacher, so that helps. I can feel a little better about leaving him with her than I did with the teachers in his San Diego daycare. He's done some lovely art projects, and I'm sure it's good for him to get to play with some peers and learn to sit with the other kids for lunch and snack. I imagine that trying to get 6-8 twelve to eighteen month olds to sit at a table and eat snack is like trying to herd cats, but somehow they do it. He really melts down when I drop him off in the morning, though, and that's hard. On the plus side, he does a lot of his pooping while he's there, and I don't really miss having to do all the poop diapers!

We're headed to San Francisco to try to get some Christmas shopping done this weekend, so that'll be fun. It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving is next week, and I'm really wishing that we were closer to Seattle so we could invite ourselves to my parents' house for dinner. Somehow my turkey never turns out as good as my mom's. I've got to crack the whip on Christmas shopping if I'm going to get everything purchased, wrapped and shipped in time, and with work taking up three days a week, I have to make more efficient use of my non-work time.

I can't promise when the next update will be, it may depend on how quickly things settle down at work!