I gave myself the gift of sleep this year. Eldest was up at 3:30am to tell us his headache report, can't remember if it was better or worse, but he said something to us and I sent him back to bed. Then Daughter came in at 5:30am to thank us for the great presents that she sneaked down and opened. She had to say that she didn't even awaken the dogs who were asleep in their beds. How wonderful. I didn't get after her too much be said it was too early for her to get up and stay up, so we sent her back to bed. I am not sure what time the boys came down and the three of them finished opening their stash. They were all quite pleased and my husband came down tonight to say that he overheard them saying this was the best Christmas ever. Well, I have succeeded once again.
This year was a little slimmer on gifts than usual for us, but it is for most people with the economy the way it has been. The sale of the last two puppies helped us to make our children's holiday more enjoyable. I must say I do enjoy more when I have given something homemade than bought. I have enjoyed sewing for years and have done my share of home sewn items as gifts to the young and old in the family. I am looking forward to the day when I can do more of that and not feel like I should be elsewhere doing something more necessary. I have taken up knitting too in the last couple of years and have made a few hats and scarves. I am now venturing into some new things there, like socks. I will have to dig out my books on knitting before I cast on stitches for that though. Luckily, I have a friend ( my piano teacher, actually) who is an avid knitter and I get tips from her. I wish some of my friends enjoyed more of those things like I do, but it seems I am an oddball in the crowd there. I am hoping that I can sit down and teach the kids in our 4-H club some of these crafts.
Right now I am working on a hat for my mother-in-law. Actually, I used to have two of them. No, I am not divorced or widowed, my husband was adopted and we found his biological mother about 6 1/2-years ago. She is a wonderful person and a very hard worker. She loves hats and is always sporting a different one just about every time we see her. So, I am knitting one just for her. I also took some of my over-production of eggs from this fall and blew them out to make some ornaments. Two of them went to my knitting piano teacher, one of Santa and one that had a hat, mittens, ball of yarn and knitting needles on it. We got a great laugh and she added the knitting one to her little knitting tree. Then to my surprise, she also had almost all Santa ornaments on her big tree, so they both fit in perfectly. The best part was making them though, it was real fun. I just wish I would have take pictures of them before I gave them to her. Silly me.
But I do have others....
This was such a fun thing to try that I am going to keep blowing out eggs to do more for Easter time. As you can see, not all of them are Christmas ornaments, there are some with butterflies and one with shiny gold lizards on it. My kids had a good time doing this too, but theirs are quite complete, still needing the end pieces glued on and the ribbons put on too. Maybe they will get Grandma's done before we go to see her this coming week.
The holidays don't mean what they used to for me, but that isn't such a bad thing. I have resolved to somewhat eliminate some of the stress. For instance, even though I want to try, I haven't sent out cards in a couple of years now. With the price of stamps, it is no cheap thing to do when you have as many family members as I do, and then our friends list has grown too. It is just one more thing to make the holiday stress peak, so why make yourself do it? I opted out. Heck, I even opted out of a tree this year, and we have a fake one up in the attic. Sad, isn't it? Not really. Our house is not exactly in order to have a tree up, and up until two days ago, I still had a puppy running around her who would have loved to taste some of the ornaments and tinsel. The kids still had the best holiday ever - or so they said. So, maybe all the trimmings and trappings aren't always as important as they may seem. Maybe next year it will be a year for more of the cheer and decorations. We will see
Great family Christmas story. I would love to hear more about your method of blowing the eggs. Sounds like a good winter project!
ReplyDeleteThanks Bill. Blowing eggs is pretty easy. I found a thread about it on BYC and thought we could give it a try. It was fun and you can do them in a lot of different ways. I will try sending you the thread on BYC though.
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