2009.12.28 Christmastime 2009

What a month!!! It has been fun without being so hectic except for the past week. I went to my sister's in Greensboro and Don went to Charlottesville, VA, both of us to be with family. We went on Christmas Eve and returned on the 26th.

During the month, we attended several parties and all were fun and we got to visit with plenty of our friends here in Charlotte. We also went to Nova Voce for some non-traditional Christmas music. One of our good friends from church was singing in this and it means so much to her every year. Don and I try to attend their Easter concert as well. Last year, we went to that one twice. I went to hear some more traditional Christmas music at church (not counting the regular Sunday services music) and my favorite male soloist, George Washington, III, sang several solos. One of his solos was O Holy Night and it was gorgeous.

We also went to a small dinner party at Jim and Nancy's and Ann and Bob were there too. Nancy served hot apple cider when we arrived, along with some hor d'oeuvres. Then we had lasagna and green beans and rolls - Yum. Later we had brownies and peppermint ice cream (my favorite kind of ice cream). Double yum!!!! We also played a game with some bagged gifts where Jim read the Christmas story with lots of deliberately placed left and rights in the story. Every time you heard left, you pass your package left and every time you heard the word, right, you pass your package right. When the story ends, you are holding your gift. The packages had CDs and DVDs and candy so they were not gender specific and all were things anyone could enjoy. It was great fun and we laughed and laughed as we passed things around - especially when Joseph and Mary "left right away." We also watched the Albert Finney musical version of "A Christmas Carol." We all loved that. I wound up giving that DVD to Don and to Julie as part of their Christmas presents.

I went to my sister's for Christmas. Don and I left around 11 on Christmas Eve and got there before 1. (I was a worried about Grayson, my cat, who was limping pretty badly on his right front leg. I cut his toenails just in case that might be the problem and Bertha is looking after my kitties while I am away. She will watch them pretty well, I believe. By the time I got home on the 26th, Gray was moving around much better.) Pretty soon after we got there, we had turkey and all the fixings - lots of cooking had gone on before we got there. Don and I really enjoyed the meal. It really hit the spot for all of us. Those of us at my sister's just snacked or helped ourselves that evening with leftovers. Don went out for steak and eggs to Waffle House as he had left us by then to prepare for a long drive the next day.

On Christmas morning, we gathered in the living room and opened presents. I was REALLY surprised to have received a new computerized sewing machine which I am now trying to learn to thread. I think I know how to thread it - it is a matter of hitting the right spots for some things so I hope practice makes it get easier and easier with time. I also got Carolina blue velvet curtains for one of my bedrooms from my nephew. So beautiful. My sister and I will get them hung as soon as we can. My sister got a whole new bedspread outfit including nice pillows with shams, a quilt to lay on the foot of the bed and new dust ruffle. Her bed now looks superb. Lauren and John got lots of things, some of them related to cooking, working out, or just great books for reading. They also got a small flat screen tv for their bedroom. David got a wireless router, several bluebird houses for putting out this spring, books. Daniel got shelving for his room. It has to be put together which should be a project, but the wood was really a nice color and it has glass doors in a couple of sections. I think it will look really good when it is installed. He also got games which we played and one of them was really fun and is authored by the crossword puzzle editor at the NY Times. It was Imagination TriBond by Will Shortz. Had fun with that one. We also played Scrabble which I like. I didn't do that well with the Scrabble game. I wound up with some pretty unusable letters and no vowels to attach them to. Maybe we should have gone with Hebrew spellings?!? Everyone got CDs or DVDs or books. We all had a great time. I gave Daniel a new Zelda game and a DVD of American Beauty which I wanted to watch with him but we ran out of time due to his working on the 26th.

Don and his daughter and two granddaughters drove to Crozet, Virginia to join his other daughter and her family for Christmas afternoon and evening. The drive was better than we had feared since there was no ice on the roads. However, it rained all day and that made it hard to see as well as one would like. But the traffic was light and there were no trucks on the road so that helped.

Lauren and John had been to Antigua this year and hot sauce is everywhere at restaurants there and it will be named for the owner of the restaurant, etc. So they gave David and Marlene a bottle of hot sauce called Susie's Hot Sauce but with Obama's picture on it. Apparently, Obama is much admired there so they put his face on lots of things to honor him. I'll have to find out how the hot sauce is.

On Christmas Day, my sister cooked (heated) a whole country ham. It took 2 and a half to 3 hours and the instructions were not very good. The glaze was also a challenge and something of an issue as the instructions left a clumpy looking substance on the ham. We diluted it and heated the ham some more after putting it on and all worked out really well. The ham was DELICIOUS. Although it was a lower salt ham, it was still plenty salty but so very hard to resist. The ham was bought from a gift certificate from Don from the previous year. It really was great and memorable. Smithfield also gave my sister a discount on a Paula Dean cake that had a mild peppermint icing. The aftertaste on the icing was the thing. At first you don't notice the peppermint but after a few minutes, you realize what you are eating. I loved that peppermint too.

We cleaned and cooked a LOT. But we enjoyed those meals like crazy. On the 26th, my sister and I and my niece went to a Ross Dress for Less to look for curtain rods for my new blue curtains. We found a decorative rod there. (The guys decided to come with us so we had David and John as well. Daniel was at work the day after Christmas.) We also went by a PetSmart to get some cat food with glucosamine in it for my Grayson who is sometimes limping pretty badly and won't eat the Cosequin for cats right now. So I got a bag of Purina One for Senior Cats and it has glucosamine in it. The minute I set it down once I was home that night, Milo was trying to tear it open. Must smell good or something. I gave some to both cats and they ate it right away. (Haven't seen Gray in it since but I am hoping he is eating it in the middle of the night. It does disappear.) Then we went by Target to see if something was available for John's dad's gift to make it complete. We didn't find it.

At home, we ate on leftovers and Marlene and I went back out to a fabric store to get material to make tiebacks. We got a satiny material and something to edge the material to give it a little more pop. I like it very much. We went home and worked on the tiebacks but it was taking a little long so we retired to the living room to visit with my niece and her husband. Daniel came home somewhere in here also but went to sleep pretty soon (been up since about 5 in the morning and worked pretty hard at Panera's).

My sister's dog, Biscuit, and her two cats were around us all 3 days and they were all well-behaved and fun to pet.

Don picked me up on the 26th maybe around 8 or so. We got home at 9:30 or 10 p.m. We unloaded a huge pile of stuff into my place and he went home. Gray was walking better than when I left. (Maybe the rain on the 24th made his arthritis hurt more than on the 26th when there was no rain.) Bertha said both Milo and Gray were good while I was gone.

The next day was the 27th, a Sunday. We went to church at 8:30 and Jim taught Sunday School. We went to Phil's for brunch and Jim's daughter was there with her 3 children who were great fun. One of them spotted Santa through his window on Christmas Eve and told about his mad race to get to bed before Santa came. As a coincidence, Don loaned Jim some Santa costuming earlier in the week!!!!!?????!!!!

After that, Don and I went to my place to open our presents. Julie had given me a automatic cleaning cat litter box. Don and I put that together and went to PetSmart to buy a cover for it and the right grade of litter. We also had to get batteries for it as we didn't want to use it in the house where we could have plugged it in. We'll see how that works. It took us hours to do all this but now it is set up and working fine. One of the cats used it during the night as I checked for that. I also got a blue topaz and silver bracelet from Sally and I think it is beautiful. I always love topaz and don't think I have anything made of blue topaz. Don gave me a book of pictures from the twins visit this year and a book that we will have a book discussion on in February called "Blood Done Sign My Name." We are hoping to get the author to come to the discussion and I am glad to have the book this early to read and mull over. I also got a trip to Black Mountain with a church group at the end of January. I am looking forward to it as I will be able to meet more of our church members in a more one on one way then. It is a women only trip. He has also been helping me endlessly with a new pc all year and before that he helped and helped with my poor dying pc.

Don and I also got a mat from his place and cleaned it up to put under a table to help give more stability to the foot pedal on the sewing machine. We set up the sewing machine on this table with foot pedal underneath. Of course, this entailed moving other things and especially getting cords off to the side of the room rather than toward the middle of the room. However, this did not take as long as you would have thought. Then we tackled putting together the litter box and getting it operational. That did take some time as we went out to stores to buy a few more things to go with it since we wanted to have it covered rather than the litter being out in the open. Figuring out how to put the cover together took us the longest and we succeeded more by our own wits than with the instructions (which made no sense).

I gave Don an out-of-print book called "Anatomy of a Game" which we had a difficult time finding at anything approaching an affordable price. But I managed to find a guy in Maine who was willing to sell it below the normal asking price. I am so grateful to him as this book was something Don wanted a lot and I like giving gifts like that to people I love. He said it was 5 times better than he expected and he wants to spend New Year's Day reading it and watching football games on tv. I know he will enjoy that.

I am sure there are things I left out but that seems to be the gist of it for Christmas this year.