Trash Picker

Ah, the Christmas Spirit!

It was so nice here Thursday night with the whole family here. A big meal, gifts exchanged. Lots of laughter -and gee, even a lot of love too.

Okay, a few minor lapses in the love but that's okay. Next time we have a big shindig planned with lots of food and a certain grandchild (who shall be unnamed) won't help do up a couple of dishes to help ready things for the meal, perhaps we shall tell that grandchild "no help, no meal!" Ah, but I doubt that would solve the issue, would it? (This did not involve anyone under the age of 12 so I do think that the request to wash up a few dishes was not something that difficult for an almost 14-year-old to do, do you?)

But that was really the only flaw in what was otherwise, from my perspective, a pretty darned nice night!

Mandy, my son, Clate and grandson, Alex and I went to the 9 p.m. church service. And, it was beautiful! The choir sang my favorite song -that old Swedish number that we also always sing at the end of the St. Lucia Program every year too -"Lyssna, Lyssna!" So lovely to sit and hear the words and melody wafting into the sanctuary as the choir sings it while out in the narthex.

Pastor Carrie's sermon was a very interesting take on what if Christ were born today -the message basically being not to look for Him in what we think of as the standard place for a King to appear. Just as 2000 years ago so many of the people then couldn't fathom how a King could be born in a manger stall, not have the gold and silver robes and ornaments befitting a king either.

Christmas morning, the kids were up very early. Actually, there was some question of how much the even did sleep because they were both awake periodically throughout the night! Maya is the one who first discovered there were presents downstairs for her and for Kurtis so she took it on herself to go up and bring him down to see -and then, to open their Santa gifts.

They both made quite a haul -between the family gifts Christmas Eve and then the Santa gifts in the morning, I think it would be a wise idea to see about building on to the house -any time now. (Oh, if only that were an affordable idea though!)

With all the food Thursday night, lots of leftovers yesterday so Gram didn't cook -ANYTHING!

Today, Mandy had work from noonish until 6 p.m. so I was here with the kids to keep me company, entertain me and such. Considering that Santa brought each youngun here a little drum set -no, not the big kind -just a small snare type drum with a tamborine, marimbas and oh yes, a harmonica too with each set! My, my! Judging by the amount of time Maya especially spent blowing in and out with this little instrument, if someone shows her how to hit the various notes in a scale, she might actually become pretty good at playing the thing!

For me -I really do want a set of earplugs though -preferably NOW!

Shortly before Mandy left for work today though, she informed me that older daughter had called and wants us to go on a search and destroy mission for a gift she is pretty sure she "lost" here.

Now Thursday night, about 2 minutes after they left, we discovered that she had forgotten oh, 3 or 4 of her gifts that she had sitting on or by my computer desk. Mandy tried right away to reach them but apparently they were still down in the gully here and had no service so by the time we did get in touch with them, they were already on the interstate and heading east there.

But the item she called about this morning it turns out was a gift certificate from her brother and his girlfriend to a very nice local restaurant up here so she wanted us (or me, since I was the one home this afternoon) to please see if we could find this gift!

Do you have any idea how much fun it is NOT to sort and sift through 8 trash bags -all but one was all gift wrap but that ONE odd bag contained more things than I really wanted to ever have to go searching through in my lifetime! Coffee grounds, bits of all kinds of food stuff from the preparations on Thursday as well as what various children (and probably a few adults too) didn't like or couldn't finish eating. Just basically a rather nasty ordeal!

And if anyone else want's to look through those bags now -to verify that my vision wasn't faulty, they are more than welcome to do so -just count me out!

Where said gift certificate is now is totally beyond me! But I do think I did my part in the search department. Maybe a bit above and beyond too -well, in my opinion anyway!

But till the next time someone loses something, ya'll can just refer to me as "Ye Olde Trash Picker!"

Hope your holiday was just as nice as ours was -where it was nice -and that no one has to perform any search missions in the garbage arenas.