Monday, December 17, 2012

How Many Days 'till Christmas?

We always thought, once the boys grew up, that we'd nail this holiday thing and have Christmas wrapped and ready by Thanksgiving and spend the month of December checking out holiday offerings at wineries and touring historic homes, all decked out for the season!

As of yesterday, here's our tree!

As you can see, we cut it down ourselves.  As you can also see, it fell of the car on the way home from the tree farm.  Somehow, the seventeen feet of rope I used, and the knots I learned in Boy Scouts, didn't make one bit of difference regarding the delivery.

You'll also notice that we don't have any snow.  The hopes of a white Christmas are in the hands of the weatherman.  At least it wasn't muddy curb-side, so I could just drag the holiday icon up the drive to the house.  Maybe tomorrow I'll get to that.

Homemade Christmas cookies are a tradition at our house and, as I usually make scores of them, I did think to buy the ingredients.  I put together about two dozen eggs, five pounds of butter, a couple of bottles of vanilla, and a nice bottle of Shiraz to get the project going...the Shiraz is to fortify me.

Of course, with work and chores around the house, including the now-flickering lights I strung on the front of the house which means a trip to the hardware store to replace the fixture so we can enjoy the aforementioned lights, I didn't get to far with the cookies.

Here's a picture of where they are now:

Last year, I made 72 dozen cookies and my son helped decorate them.

As you can see, I've only mixed a bit of what I intended to and just now am remembering that I didn't buy anything for decorations.

I'll get around to it soon, but first we have to get those Christmas cards going, as many have to be mailed to get to out of state addresses and with today being the busiest day of the United States Postal Service, if I don't hurry, I may get them there just as the postal clerks decide that it's time for their coffee break.

We did buy the cards and the stamps.  And, we have all sorts of address labels that we collect from about thirty different charities during the year.  Some have my name, some my wife's.  Once, a relative got a card from us with the wife label. Her first thought was that we divorced, as only her name appeared on the return address section.  My wife says it will take a lot more than the price of a postage stamp for me to get single again!

I'm guessing you want to see how far along I am with the cards...here they are:





As I look at them, I'm guessing I should try to find the envelopes..I know that they came with them. Of course, I also need our address book...we work very hard to keep that in shape so that we have every one's address right at our fingertips.  It's in this pile somewhere....


Right after I get all of that done, I'll start some shopping and then get down to the task of wrapping everything.  Note to self: hope wrapping paper isn't with the address book.

Maybe when the kids were small we had to get things done in a more timely fashion, as there were school concerts, and holiday parties for the Scouts, and church and family visits, and kids getting sick just before you head out the door.  These days we don't have all of that stuff and we probably think we got all that time back and can wait until closer to the holiday to start.  Strange thing...doesn't work.

Well, one more week to go and I'm sure we'll pull off a Christmas miracle...by actually having Christmas ready for Christmas.  I'll keep you posted over the next six days on how this goes...just checked, I did manage to remember to lay in some refreshments for the holiday and to provide me support as I gear up for the fest....


Now, where did I put that corkscrew???




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