MORE CHRISTMAS & SOME MEMORIES

Am I NOT posting often (as Chandler Bing might have said on Friends)?  And it's great that I am putting aside the time...things are so busy now but this IS my journal!!  And I'm loving it.  So, do you remember the amaryllis I found at Home Depot back in early November?  Well, I took a gamble on when to plant it and it bloomed big time the other day.  From my experience with others I have potted, I'm guessing this one will last until Christmas, maybe not looking as gorgeous, but awesome.

Isn't it an extraordinary flower?  I've had them almost every Christmas in so many colors (and they usually bloomed in January as I tried to get them on sale later in the season ;-), I just love this one.  I have it in my bedroom near the window.  

Also on my dresser I have these little choir girls.  Do you remember these?  I sure do, and years ago I found reproductions in the Vermont Country Store catalog.  I remember these as a child; where my mother had them displayed, I'm not sure.  But I remember them vividly.  I had five and The Husband broke the head off one the other day.  I tried to melt the wax with a match and it just turned black.  So sad.  These are on my dresser as well and the sun was shining in so perfectly.  I would never light the wick...who wants to see their little heads burning off! :(

Just a snap of the tree.  I have such a varied bunch of ornaments.  I always seem to pick up a few each year.  And with the four kids, we have all of their "Baby's First Year" and the ones with their first grade pictures in a frame made with shredded wheat and glue! lol!  We have every dog we've ever owned in some sort of frame or inscribed on a ceramic dog bone.  And I have the awful attempts at hand crafted ornaments that have to take center stage...only because I tried SO hard!!

And that Abigail...she really helped me out by wrappng gifts again this year.  But she also hung this little list up a few days ago and this is her to a "T".  She seems to favor Milo and her brother Kevin (The Mild and Meek...is that from the Wizard of Oz??)  And the rest of us?  Not on her "nice" list.  Oh, and I am Devil Woman...always.  That is how she refers to me.  Always.  Okay, now you are seeing another side to me that I can't completely deny!! 

On a sad note, and I am only mentioning it because I have so many ornaments that I was so lucky to pick out a few years ago...this is the three year anniversary that my father died.  You know, at the time, on my blog, I didn't say much because he was a very quiet man and the hurt and confusion and all those emotions you feel when someone you love passes were just so hard to filter and write about.  So I felt it was best not to share.  And I get a lot not right because he was so private; his years growing up with three brothers and a mother and father that died before I knew them as grandparents.  His years in the navy where he received his high school diploma.   All those things I should have asked him more about.  Too late.  He was a wonderful provider of 7 kids, and sometimes worked 2 jobs at a time.  He was really a strong man when the love of his life, my mother, was succumbing to cancer in 2001.  But my heart was so totally fulfilled with my love for him when he broke down the fences and let the tears flow when the priest was comforting us at her side.  This is very hard to write about and I just don't know if any of you are really interested in hearing this...but it's so good to pay homage to a wonderful father and man...Lenny. as his friends called him.  Just plain ol' dad to us.  God, we were lucky.

Ha!!!!!  Again I end with Rusty, my grandog!!  Emily, my daughter, just seems to get the best pictures of him!!  He's wearing a sweater that I gave her/him that was Milo's...Milo hates clothes and I understand...he just doesn't  have that personality.  Layla has the same sweater and at 8 pounds, she's always quivering from the cold in the  winter and loves it.  But look at this guy by the Christmas tree with the snow falling...either waiting for his dad or Santa!!  Oh...God help me when they have kids!!!

I am so not organized (as Chandler would say).  I don't mean to complain but I will anyway.  I sleep so poorly...in bed at 10:00...toss and turn til 1:00...get up and look at emails, go back to bed and toss and turn til 4:00 a.m. and then sleep pretty well til 9.  Okay. big deal.  I make my plans for the day, especially for the holidays, like today...wrap gifts and make cookie dough.  Oh yeah, more like laundry, running to the pharmacy and vacuuming up tree needles!!  Thank goodness we can order pizza!

So I'm off to bed.  Tomorrow is another day to wrap and say Hello to that guy in BROWN, if you know what I mean!!!! :)  And then wrap some more.  But oh...so ever grateful for the abundance and blessings we have!

Happy Holidays to all of you, my friends! :)

XO,

 Jane