Thu. - Wed., Dec. 20-26

The following two pictures show N & J's current favorite outside game. It is played in all kinds of variations. J spinning, N spinning, spinning while sitting, spinning while standing, and spinning together, one child in each swing, twisted around one another. "The Hurricane" is what they call it. [Check out the cuh-RAZY amount of shade in our north side back yard this time of year!!] [Also, note the stuffed monkey taking a turn on the bar, and the stuffed bear sitting on the see-saw! lol]

Here are two pictures of N in the p.j.'s Mom made!

(This picture just CRACKS ME UP. How silly. I went ahead and shot it, so you can see the drama queen with which we live!)

I’m having a hard time believing it’s been almost a week since I posted! It leaves a lot of catching up ... for those who are interested. ;)

Last Friday N worked on some little handmade cards to go into the Christmas baskets for the shut-ins and elderly. She used rubber stamps – for the first time - and had a fun time. The children played outside a bunch, and Justus Lego’ed, too. I baked two double-batches of cookies, and then the whole family had a cookie frost-ing party. I fielded phone calls of concern about Dad’s fainting at a church function, and ended up enjoying a lllllllong phone call with Sydni that night … ‘til 1:00 a.m.!! We’ve only done that on one other occasion. Eek!

Saturday was a pleasant, relaxed day. We walked the dogs, and let Tortilla Soup simmer on the stove all day in preparation for supper with Dick and Shirley. Oh, man, that was a wonderful time.

Sunday was normal, except that the church gave us a Christmas card full of cash. With all the extremely generous financial gifts from the church this season we are, a.) humbled and grateful, and b.) able to accomplish a number of things we have been postponing for a while! W-O-W.

Monday we grocery shopped. We hated to be out that day, but there was no way around it. I cooked the rest of the day, prepping for Christmas Day. Christmas Eve night we took plates of homemade cookies to our neighbors. That was a lovely … oh, 10 minutes.

Tuesday we slept in. We’re good at that here. Jeremy couldn’t go to sleep until 6:30 a.m., so he was happy to get some sleep!! Since I’d done 95% of my cooking the day before, and Elaine was set to do all her cooking Christmas morning, with company not arriving until 1:00 p.m. we just had a relaxing morning! The afternoon was super-relaxing, too!! David & Connie were two of our guests, and Wayne England our other guest. Oh, wow, we had a delicious meal, Connie helped me clean up … until there were ZERO dishes to do(!!) … and then after Wayne had to go home, David & Connie joined us for two games of For the Heck of It, our all-time favorite card game. We got calls from both Jennifer and Mom, which was absolutely great. After everyone went to bed I checked out Sydni’s blog, hhhhhhhhhoping that she had posted pictures of the get-together we missed out on. She had. I cried. Like a waterfall. [You’d think I’d be used to it by now … spending holidays away from my beloved extended family. Nope.]

That brings us to today, which was another super-relaxed day! Guess what I did with Natasha for a little while this afternoon. Colored!! It relaxed us both to the point that we wanted to sleep! LOL But then I remembered that I’d not prepared my Bible class yet! Eek! Lol N & J played outside a lot today, especially with the Moon Sand, courtesy of the Watrouses.

I have not missed one day of guitar practice in a week and a half now. The tips of my first three fingers on my left hand can feel very little of anything. It is really, really strange. I can't feel the texture of the desk or certain keys of the keyboard. But, good progress is being made in the guitar-playing area. "That's nice."