Almost Time....

The excitement is in the air in this old house -at 7 a.m. on Christmas Eve when there is no school, Maya is up, running around, trying to snag candy canes from the Christmas tree and even playing a Christmas Carols cd to help keep her in the Christmas mode!

She survived the past two days with the box and clothes basket sitting in the dining room, tightly packed with presents with only a few reprimands. When I finished wrapping gifts early Wednesday morning as I placed the packages in these two containers, I made sure than any presents with her name on 'em were firmly placed in the very bottom of the big, long storage tote and as many packages as I could stack there were then placed on top of her gifts. This resulted in a few tears Wednesday when she saw no packages with her name on them and Mandy and I told her that must mean she's not been the good little girl she thinks she's been and apparently she's not gonna get ANYTHING for Christmas. One of my blogger and facebook friends said that was a poor way to deal with her but I had no other place to put these packages plus, we had been warning her frequently -too frequently -that her behavior better improve or else.

Yesterday -that would be Thursday, ya know -morning, I was listening to Kurtis practice his new-found skill of going up and down the stairs and at one point, thought he must be falling as there was a lot of extra clunkety-clunk-clunk sounds on the stairs. But as he came through the living room to the doorway into the dining room, I saw what had been causing that sound.

There he stood, holding this big box that says "Parking Garage" on the side and has pictures on the box of matchbox cars.

He stopped, looked up and me and pointed to the box saying, "Race cars? Race cars?"

Yes, baby , there would be race cars involved with that box and that he had managed to drag it downstairs told me that I might be well-served if I could find a race car and take off in it before his Momma got home from work.

You just know, don't you, that the appearance of this box was because he had also picked up skills his Mother had when she was but a little older than he is right now -snooping and finding stashed presents and even being brave enough to pull something out that Mandy had stashed under her bed and haul it down the steps to show good old Grammy his "find" of the day!

I finally completed the final tablecloth I've been working on for the past two weeks about 6 a.m. this morning, hence the reason I am still awake at this hour!

Here's what the center part of this tablecloth looks like.


And this picture shows what is in each of the outer corners of the tablecloth too!

Now, that tablecloth -along with a pair of fingertip towels with a floral embroidery and a pair of pillowcases too -is all packed up in a box and gift wrapped but I didn't assign a name on the tag I put on the box. Rather, for this package and the other one contained another tablecloth plus towels and pillowcases, I just wrote "Surprise" where the label says who the present goes to. Then, when we do our gift exchange later today, I'm going to hold both boxes up in front of my daughters and tell them each to choose a package and whichever tablecloth is in that box they pick, will solve my dilemma of trying to determine who gets which tablecloth! And if they want to switch items around, that's fine with me too then!

Now, since I was up all night working to complete the border on this tablecloth and have already had my little walk up the road and back with Samuel J. Muttley -about 3/4 of a mile one way which gives me roughly having walked -or almost trotted, I should say as Sammy may be a small dog, but he sure can pull a person along quite handily -about 1 1/2 miles then, round trip! At the pace he sets for me on our walks, the calories -and fat cells -should fly off me! Provided I can keep up the pace with eating salads, salads and more salads!

So, I'm gonna go lie down now and take a snooze. I have a few things partially done for our meal so I should be able get in a nice little nap before I have to dig in and cook a big meal for the whole family who will be here -or should be here -by 4 p.m. After that, Maya will be happy to have the presents given out and we'll have time to relax a tiny bit then before going to the late (or candlelight) service at 8 p.m.

So, because I don't anticipate having time to be back on here today -maybe tomorrow I'll catch up on my blog reading -I wanted to be able to say this though to each and everyone of you who reads my blog -faithfully or now and then -have a very Merry Christmas and the Happiest of New Years!

And now, some sleep for me so I can have a God Jul!

Peace!