Waiting for Christmas!

Not this week, but the very next one (after this one that we are doing) is when Christmas comes! I can't hardly believe that! I made a paper chain so I could see how many days are left...and every night right after prayers, I take one paper off and rip it into bitty pieces and toss them all up in the air as high as I can and watch them come down like snowflakes! Mom said I should clean up all of those pieces...but I asked her if it is ok since it is a special part of my very own celebration and that I will pick them up RIGHT after Christmas. And I will. She just smiled and sorta sighed and closed the door.

Jumping from paper to paper is fun. Maybe I have invented a famous game or something. Maybe I better think of a name for it very quick. I told my best friend, Luci, to come see my bedroom floor. "Your what?" she blinked. But, was she ever surprised at the three zillion and fifty thousand torn pieces of colored bits of paper all over my room.
"You can only step on the red ones" I told her.
Now Blue!
Now Yellow!
Now Green!

By the time we had jumped on every color a couple of times, we were tired. "Luci, look at my little tiny smallest chain! That means Christmas is coming SOON, very very soon!"

"You really should clean all those papers up." she said.

"Right after Christmas" I told her, "because this is part of my waiting for Christmas stuff that I do."

"What else can we do while we wait for Christmas Luci?" I showed her our tippy tree that is sorta slanty and I showed her the presents and the numbers on them and what I thought could be in every single one. And then we talked about the most Important thing: what gift to give Jesus...because it really is HIM that we are all celebrating about...and we are both still thinking very hard about that. We shook some of the presents a bit more (very gently) and we colored a snowman too. Then Luci's mom called and said it was time for her to come home for dinner. AND, if I think about it, dinner is close to reading and homework and then bedtime again. Yippy skippy! Another piece of chain is about to come off!!!

I was helping my mom with her waiting for Christmas stuff. We cut out some gingerbread men and after I ate two whole men...I had a big inspiration idea. I could take gingerbread cookies to all the grandmas on our street. Sometimes, people give grandmas stuff like oranges and bananas and apples in a basket. I bet they have fifty-five baskets in every room in their houses by now. But if I was a grandma, I would want gingerbread cookies instead. I whispered about my idea to mom. She liked my plan and so we made some special ones for Mrs. Saderson and Nellie and Sister Rugers. We iced the cookies and put raisins for the buttons and butterscotch chips for the eyes and a huge smile of red hots and almonds for shoes. We used frosting for glue! You can't even eat real glue and so this is a very very important good brain storming idea! My mom is amazing! I decorated those boys really really good and then I bundled up in my warmest coat and fuzzy white hat and boots while mom wrapped the cellophaney see through stuff on the gingerbread boys. It was soooooo cold outside. But something inside of me was warm and that happy was there and I could tell that it was.

Mrs. Saderson opened her big brown door and just about laughed all over the room when I showed her my surprise. She put her hands over her mouth and then she laughed again. She told me all about when she was a girl just like me, (but she doesn't look like she was ever a girl just like me) and she told me every thing about her family, and her kids, and showed me pictures of every one of them and told me that they were all really busy and then she told me how she loved gingerbread men for Christmas. And she was still laughing probably, when I got down the street to Nellie's.

I had to knock a lot of times really really loud. Finally Nellie opened her big yellow door. When she saw my surprise, she put her hands on her hips. "Why it has been a long time since I have had a gingerbread man!" she said. And she didn't tell me her whole life, like Mrs. Saderson did, but she walked really really slow into the kitchen and made me some hot chocolate and asked me all about how I had made such a nice surprise and asked me about what my family does for Christmas. She smiled when I went down her steps and she told me to be very careful because the walk was slippery.

Sister Rugers said my surprise was the very nicest one she could think of. She even let me hold her cat named Ruby. It is a super soft cat and it likes me alot I think. She said I could come back anytime and hold Ruby again. She wanted me to sing a Christmas song for her and so I tried to remember all the words to 'Away in a Manger'. I got it pretty ok, but she had to help me in a couple of times. She said she learned that song in Primary too. I didn't even know they had Primary way back in those days, whenever they were. But they did. On the way home I thought about those grandmas. Wow! They were little like me (someday way back long ago). And that made me know that someday far from now, I will have little krinklee lines all over my face like them and I will be old too! I had never really thought about that before. What kind of grandma do I want to be when I get krinklee?
I took a red paper strip off my chain that night and ripped it into twenty-two pieces and threw them up as high as I could! I jumped on all the red pieces, and the blue pieces, and the yellow pieces, and the green pieces, and then jumped right into bed. While I waited for my mom or dad to come tuck me in, I thought about my day. Wow! I really will turn into a grandma some day. I really really will. The papers strips come off so fast. And when I am a grandma, I will be so excited for Christmas and I will make paper chains and count off the days (maybe for a whole year or twenty)...and I will jump from color to color (probably in my whole entire house!) because my game is such a great invention that I made. And...when I am a krinkle-ly grandma, maybe someone will bring me a gingerbread man with icing and red-hots, and then I will make them some chocolate milk and I will show them lots of pictures of my family, and I will let them pet my cat. ..and I will ask them what ideas they have for an extra special gift to celebrate Jesus!!!Those are all good waiting for Christmas things to do!
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