My Family

This is one of my favorite Christmas gifts. The last picture they took together was when Landrie was a baby. It was long over due and I am so proud of the pictures and all of my precious kids.

Our Reading Material Is So Different

Pops just came in while I was getting ready and telling me about this book he just finished. He loves to read, and when he is not working, he will read 4 or 5 books a week. He reads all kinds.

One of his favorites that he has just finished is "In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day". He loved it so much, he bought a copy for each of the kids for Christmas.

He bought me a book too. It is a novel and I am loving it. "Good Christian Bitches". It is sitting on my nightstand right next to my People magazine.

What A Great Day

We had a great day yesterday. Sometimes it is totally chaotic, but I tried to take it slow and easy and soak in every bit of fun and enjoy spending time with each person.

Landrie and Karsyn got tired of opening presents. After a little while, Landrie said, "I don't think I want to open any more presents, I will just save them for later."

Our last Christmas (always the most chaotic) was lots of fun. We had 8 extras join us for dinner. We had an extra join us for gift time. Santa came to visit us. All of the kids sat on his lap and got pictures. It was really cute. After dinner, we had a birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus.

Now that it is over, it is time to take it all down. I'm not too excited about the task, but it will all be down and put away by noon.

Update at 11:30 - I am almost done!!!! Yeah!!! All I have left is the tree in my room, which I think I will leave up for a little longer, and my nativity. It doesn't make a big mess to put it away, but I am too lazy right now to wrap up all of the little pieces. No more for about 325 more days.

Merry Christmas!

I am sitting here waiting for everyone around here to wake up and start the crazy day.

We had Christmas #1 last night at Jennifer and Lamar's house. We had just Pops and Lolly and our kids and grandkids. We had chili, tamales, king ranch, queso, strawberry cake and sugar cookies that the girls helped decorate. The kids opened their gifts from each other and they gave us our gifts from them. We played games, including Guitar Hero, which I did not think was that fun.

This is a new tradition for us as in the past, we would go to church and then go out to dinner. I love going to a church that has 20+ services, so we have lots of choices. We decided to go on Saturday night and have a low key Christmas Eve. We all had fun and I think that will become one of our new traditons.

This morning, they will all come over here and open up the gifts from us. We got the girls a barbie jeep, so I am sure we will be making many trips up and down the street. After we get the paper and boxes cleaned up, we will call my mother in law and she will come over. I will cook our Christmas breakfast. Eggs, bacon, sausage, hashbrowns, gravy, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, blueberry cream cheese rolls and orange juice. After that, we don't need anything to eat for the rest of the day.

We will then open up gifts from my mother in law. I will start cooking for Christmas dinner. At around 5, we will go to my mothers to have Christmas with my side of the family. That includes my parents, my brother and his wife and 2 kids, my sister and her husband and 5 kids. 4 of her kids are married and between them they have 6 kids. Add into that our family of 9. Just let me say, it gets really crazy. Then we will have dinner. My mother in law will join us there for dinner.

I am making a ham, sausage dressing, green bean casserole, potato casserole and cherry cheese cake. It is an exhausting day, but I am excited about it. I am so blessed to have a great family to share it with.

Do you think I could possibly get a little nap in there?

I hope you have a fun Christmas day filled with great memories.

Interesting Day

I had j*ry duty again yesterday. Thank goodness next week is my last week.

Tuesday morning, when I was a couple of blocks from my house, I noticed a burgundy truck behind me. It was no big deal. About a mile from my house, I noticed that he had paced himself with me and rolled down his window. I was on my cell phone, so I just kept talking and pretended not to see him.

After a few miles, I started getting suspicious that he was following me. I started making extreme lane changes and he would follow. He generally stayed a couple of cars back, but if I would speed up, he would too. As I entered the downtown area, he was still following. Knowing I would soon be turning right, I moved to the far left lane to try to throw him off.

I saw a parking place to my right and quickly veered over. He got stuck in the left lane and I finally got a glimpse at his license plate. He was stuck turning left and I quickly turned right. I have looked up his license plate info and it returns to a truck out of Santa Fe, Texas. He didn't have a front plate on his custom grill, so I couldn't get his info until just before I lost him.

He followed me for about 15 miles. Now, I have my eyes out for burgundy trucks. Do you know how many burgundy trucks there are out on the road?

J*ry duty was quite interesting. The foreman got mad because a case he thought would be indicted got no billed. He pounded his fist on the table and was cussing. He immediately followed the DA out of the room to tell him who voted against it. Needless to say, people got quite ticked off. His little fit followed last Wednesdays fit when he yelled and cussed at another juror. I was one of the people that he was ticked off at. I politely let him know how rude, unprofessional and disrespectful he was.

I can't wait until this morning. Emotions are running pretty strong. We just might have World War III. Quite interesting!

Christmas "Rules"

I am not typically a rule follower. The older I get, if someone tells me I have to do something, I am more than likely not to do it.

I don't like to follow them, but I do make them. They are usually for me. One of these days, I will write about my everyday rules, but here are some of my Christmas rules. I guess I should call them "guidelines" instead of rules, but rules sounds more fun.

*I like to have the Christmas decorations up the weekend before Thanksgiving. For the past 10 years, at least one of the kids has been away at college. I like to have all the decorations up before Thanksgiving so that when they come home, it is special.

*The Christmas decorations come down on December 26th. I have even been known to start taking it down Christmas night. After all of the presents are unwrapped and the tree is empty, the holiday is over for me. From that point on, I keep thinking about the chore of putting it all away, and I am ready to do it and get it done. The past several years we have taken a trip between Christmas and New Years and I especially wanted it to be relaxing and not have to think about the work when I came home.

*Everyone has to have the same number of presents to open up. We takes turns opening up one at a time, and I want everything to be equal. That means someone might get a box that has 5 shirts in it and another person might get a pair of socks, but they will have the same number of presents under the tree.

*I have to spend within $5 of each person. I will wrap up $$$ in a box to even up the amount I spend on each person. I spend the same amount on everyone, including my kids, son-in-law and granddaughters. I don't ever want anyone to think that I wasn't fair.

*Anything can be returned without any hard feelings. I keep all of my receipts and hand them out as freely as I do the presents. I want everyone to love what they get.

*I wrap the presents as I buy them. I don't allow myself to go shopping until what I bought the previous day has been wrapped. The UPS man usually comes around 5:00 and I wait for him with tape and scissors in hand.

I think the wrapping rule is one of my best. I will never forget a Christmas about 25 years ago where I waited until Christmas Eve night to start wrapping. That will never happen again.

I am about half way through with my shopping and I am counting down the days until Christmas.