Hell Week and A Thank You or Two

I don't have just one Hell Week in my life I have a few.  They come around the kids' birthdays (planning parties for the masses can be Hell), Holidays (The big Easter Egg Hunt in the cul-de-sac, Haunted House, Santa in the cul-de-sac for Christmas Eve...that reminds me I have to go order him.  I'll be right back.  Okay, I'm back.  Santa is in the process of being ordered.  Check out Santaforhire.com if you want to order one for your Xmas party) and triathlons. 

However, just because it is my Hell week, not everything about these types of weeks are hellish.  For instance, I received my 2nd and 3rd blog awards from three really great bloggers:  Quinn at Seeing. . .dreaming. . .writing  was the first to send me such a sweet award and then today I was surprised to find myself award by the leaders of the Writing Half Marathon I have been participating in; erica and christy.

Look at it!  Just look at it!  It looks good enough to eat! 

Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!

I am supposed to send this sweet award onto a few other sweet blogging friends and I promise I will as soon as Hell Week is over.  I want to avoid giving awards on this sweet and sour posting. 

I spent Sunday night sending out updated emails to remind my 11 families of donators what they offered to donate and gave them the days of the week to bring their items.  Last night, I spent some time going over the plans with my husband so we could map out where animated decor and dummies are going to be located and then we tried to pin point exactly where all the scarers are going to be arranged.  Friday we handed out 100 invitations at the school and it didn't seem hardly enough now that the word has spread about our annual event.  Unfortunately, not everyone gets an invitation every year because we couldn't possibly accomodate the whole school of 750 kids.  However, some won't show and others will bring their friends along.  It will be interesting to see the turnout this year.

Still lots to do before construction begins on Friday.  My mom is flying out from Utah tomorrow to help with the kids during this event, and we need to start stuffing dummies, putting batteries in animated decor, and wait until Thursday night to figure out what loose ends need to be picked up that might have been overlooked on the donation list.  Once this ball is in motion there is no stopping it.

To top it off, I've been participating in erica and christy's Writing Half Marathon and I had no idea how fierce the competition was going to be.  It's an excellent indication of what NaNoWriMo is going to be like for me.  I started out thinking 1,200 to 1,500 words per day was going to be enough to keep me near the top in points but I was wrong.  Sunday night I turned in nearly 5,000 words for all of the weekend and it still wasn't enough to make me the points leader.  I turned in over 1,700 words around 7pm last night and thought I should get some sleep early but I couldn't get my rapidly forming story out of my head so I got up and pounded out another 2,285 words which I submitted this morning.  I think I might be the points leader for the moment, but it's day to day in these types of competitions.  I am driven now, thanks to the competition, but also because I started worrying that I wasn't averaging NaNo's speed which is 1,666 words per day.

All in all, if you don't hear from me in comments or new posts for the remainder of this week then just know that I'm either under a pile of haunted house decorations or tucked away pounding out as many words as I can for this competition. 

Tell me, do you have a Hell Week or two in your life and when do they appear?  Any advice on getting through these types of weeks with less stress?