This is my favorite week of the year.

No, not my favorite holiday, just my favorite week. The one between Christmas and New Year's.

Sometimes it's my favorite because the Christmas holiday season has left me so exhausted I can barely move and I love having a few days to sleep late, walk around in a robe until 2pm, and eat the last of the Christmas cookies before I start de-toxing.

But that's not all there is to it. I know that because I'm not exhausted this year and I'm still relishing the week.

There's something about my internal makeup that treasures this week of closure and of preparation for a new year.

Some of the tasks are the same each year. I'm a calendar junkie, so this is the week the old ones come down and the new ones go up, pretty much one in every room of the house. The Papa and I clear out our closet and get several bags of clothes, shoes, even spare linens ready to donate. I file all the paperwork that's been collecting on my desk so I can start the year fresh. I check the bank account to make sure that any transactions that need to clear before the end of the year are showing up. Back when I used to write checks, I would take the old pad of checks out of the cover and insert a new one, even if the old one was barely started, so I wouldn't have one pad containing checks from two years. These days, I don't GO through a whole pad in a year, so I don't worry about that. I clean out the gift wrap cart of all the Christmas things and replace the all-occasion wraps and bags and ribbon.

And then some tasks vary from year to year, depending on the distinctives of the past twelve months and the landscape ahead. This year we're completing lots of tasks related to getting three kids in college, both financial and logistical. I have a list a mile long (okay, an inch and a half) of calls that need to be made, forms that need to be mailed, purchases that need to be finalized as our crop of young adults settles in for a new semester (and in one case, a whole new life!)

This year, since we're having friends in on both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, I'm assembling grocery ingredients, games, and other party stuff as well as putting away some of the Christmas decorations.

Always, there's the annual choosing of a new verse or passage of Scripture that I focus on in the New Year. This year's (see my left sidebar) was particularly meaningful to me for a variety of reasons; today I'll begin choosing a new one. It's also a time to review and recite to myself all the ways that God blessed during the year and once again proved His sufficiency and His faithfulness...

One of my favorite things of the week is reviewing my list of completed books for the year and starting my "wish" list of new ones. This list usually starts with all the ones I receive for Christmas and gets lengthened with suggestions from friends, blogs, bestseller lists, and emails from audible.com. I've started the new list, also on my left sidebar, but have only added a fraction of the ones that are already floating around my head.

What do you do this week? Is it an interlude you enjoy or one you dread? Do share :-)

Labels: Books, Holidays