Christmas and New Years

While taking the risk of sounding like everyone else, I can't believe Christmas and New Years have come and gone so fast!  My mother always said that the older you get the faster time goes.  She is right!  I love Christmas - the shopping, the baking, making the big Christmas dinner but my favorite part is watching everyone open the gifts I so carefully picked out for them.  Of course I love opening my gifts too but its the giving that gives me the most pleasure.  Since I discovered the web sites that sell one item a day at a great price I now start my "shopping" in January.  I love seeing something that I know will be perfect for someone and having it just a few days later.  I must admit though that I have to keep a list throughout the year so I remember what I have purchased and where it is.  Luckily now "there is an app for that"! 

This year since I retired I had the time to make quite a few presents for the family.  For mom I created a hard-cover book via picaboo.com using pictures that she had taken with her digital camera.  At 90 years old her even having a digital camera is quite a feat.  I think she looks at the book daily and is always ready to show it to her friends.  Cindy and Jennifer got "endless scarves" that I knit.  Each of the kids got a knitted scarf.  Gabbie wore hers most of Christmas day.  My big project of the year was to make the 4 older kids block puzzles like I remembered having as a child.  Each one was personalized with pictures of themselves and one picture of something they are interested in.  When I told Rich what I was making he looked at me like I was nuts.  Midway through the project I realized why!  For some reason I thought each puzzle would require 4 pictures.  Not so - each one required 6 pictures - sized exactly to fit the 9 wooden blocks.  First I purchased (36) 1.5" wooden blocks, then painted each set of 9 a different color.  I had to find and size 6 pictures for each of the 4 kids.  Since they needed to be varnished I could not use my home printer, but had to send them to Kinkos to be printed on a laser printer.  Once I received them, each picture had to be cut into 9 squares which were then glued to each block.  Figuring out how to do that was quite the engineering feat.  Each block got 2 coats of varnish.  To finish I printed a sheet showing all 6 pictures for each child so they knew what their puzzles should look like.  Let's see - that was a total of 24 pictures each cut into 9 pieces for a total of 216 individual pieces.  Next time I think of something like that I will run it by Rich first for his opinion!  I think in my last posting I said I would show pictures of the items I had made.  I forgot to do that!

We had a great Christmas.  Cindy and Daphne were here on Christmas Eve and had a great visit.  Cindy went to the candlelight service at our church with us then went back home to Dallas.  Rich, my mom and I had our Christmas early the next morning.  Everything was then cleaned up in preparation for the next shift with Jenn, James and the kids.  That's the fun part!  There is nothing like watching 5 kids open presents.  The yearly prime rib and Yorkshire Pudding dinner followed. 

New Years is now a quiet celebration between Rich and I.  We went to the movies and dinner and then came home to play cards to try to keep us awake until midnight.  Unfortunately for the first time our local station did not broadcast live from New York.  I am still bitter about missing out on that this year.  The downside to the new year for me is the anticipation of knee replacement surgery on Monday, Jan. 3.  On one hand I can't wait to have it over with and eventually be free of the constant pain.  On the other hand I am scared to death about the surgery and the aftermath of being bedridden for a day and the recupperation.  Knowing how much I hate exercise I can just imagine what the physical therapist will think of me.  Pity the pool soul!  But please pray for me.  

I hope all my friends and family had a great Christmas.  Wishing you the best year ever!