Category: Life

My Christmas Story

farm barn in winter
Yesterday

It’s Christmas Eve day and the snow is coming later in the day so hubby has been working in the barn finishing up his outside work on our 50 acres while I have been baking like mad for the big family gathering tomorrow.

All four kids live close by and come to our farmhouse, with their families for Christmas dinner. The farm has been in the family for generations and over the years we’ve enjoyed many happy holidays together at the long, wooden table in front of the big fireplace.

We are lucky to have a beautiful view from the big windows along the side of the house and can see the distant mountains quite clearly this time of year. After the snowfall tonight, we will all be able to go outside tobogganing at some point tomorrow. All the grandkids are old enough to enjoy playing in the snow and going sledding and we have the perfect hill that slopes down to the big garden area.

I’m almost done baking the pies, the Christmas tree is decorated with loads of presents heaped underneath and the extra bedrooms are ready for the ones who will spend the night tomorrow. Hubby will come in soon and sit with me by the tree and we’ll watch the snow fall. We’ll have some spiked eggnog or a glass of wine and talk about the day and look forward to tomorrow when the whole family will be together – it will be hectic, but it’s what life is all about.

There are bloggers who will write stories like this and they will be true, but my story is not.  I used to think that having dreams that never came true meant I had failed at life somehow, but now I know better.  I no longer dream expecting to one day have it happen, but it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the thought.  I am blessed to have all that I DO have and I know that.

So what does your Christmas dream look like?  Or is it reality?

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Our Living Christmas Ornament – Bad Kitty

Cat in the Christmas Tree
A Living Christmas Decoration

Our black cat, Skittle, ignored the Christmas tree while we were putting it up and hanging the decorations, but the next morning when I sat down to work at the computer which is in the same room as the tree, she began to climb up through the middle of it.

I sat watching it shake and dislodge some of the ornaments and the string of lights and all I could do was laugh. We knew she would climb it – and she did not disappoint. So now I am taking all the breakable ornaments off because when she jumps out -she doesn’t climb back down – she takes ornaments with her.

This is Skittle’s first Christmas with us and we suspected she’d want to climb the tree since she loves to be up high. It’s one of the reasons I don’t want her to go outside. All those trees to climb – and get stuck in!

Do you have your tree up? Any living ornaments on yours?
♦ Thanks to reader Les who told me about this cute You Tube video about a naughty kitty in a Christmas tree.. funny! See if you can relate to “Simon’s Cat”

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Two Hummel Figurines From My Mother’s Collection

Hummel figurines
Little Tooter and Bookworm Girl

My mother loved her Hummel figurines and I’m pretty sure she had more than these two but they are the ones I have. She did not give them to me, I had to sneak them out of her house when she was in the nursing home with Alzheimers and her moron of a husband was left with everything.

I don’t have much from all that my mother owned. Her husband was a drunk and by the time he died, everything had been lost or sold, but I’m glad for what I do have and these two figurines remind me of when I was a kid. The Bookworm Girl (and probably the other one too) sat on a little shelf in the kitchen near the windows that looked out onto the big backyard. My mother used to wash my hair in the kitchen sink and I would lay up on the counter with my head back in the sink – then when she was done and I’d sit up, that Hummel was right at eye level. I remember looking at it while she dried my hair with a towel.

I came across the “Little Tooter” and “Bookworm Girl” a few days ago when I was unpacking a box of things that had been lugged around from house to house through all my moves of the past five years. I was happy to see them and glad they were still in one piece. They now sit on the shelf in my kitchen. I wonder what my mother would think.

Remembering Thanksgiving

fall leaves and Happy Thanksgiving textMy favorite Thanksgivings took place long ago when I was a kid. There were no microwave ovens to quickly heat the cooling food, but I remember it always tasted great. All the Aunts and my grandmother pitched in to help get everything ready and my sister and I (if it was at our house) had to set the table. I couldn’t wait for everyone to arrive – it was exciting!

We had turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, boiled onions and carrots, cranberry sauce and homemade pies made by my mother, Nana and Aunts. My Nana used to make “Monkey Faces” which were little mincemeat cookies and also mincemeat pie. It was the only thing I wasn’t crazy about. What the heck is mincemeat anyway??

The meals I remember best were when we ate in our big living room with a couple of tables put together, or at my Grandmother’s house. She lived at the bottom of my driveway and her house was small, but some years we’d all cram in there and it was great. My cousins and my sister would share the kids table and we usually ended up laughing at something and couldn’t stop. Then we’d get in trouble, and that would make us laugh more.

After I grew up I really didn’t like Thanksgiving. It was a family time and I didn’t have much family.  My parents had split up and I had moved south to live in Florida.   My husband had a big family but they lived up here in the north. Thanksgiving became a day of work for me.  In fact, for a few years I worked in the Flower Shop of a local grocery store and I did have to go to work for the morning on Thanksgiving Day.  Then I’d stand in the kitchen for hours cooking the whole, huge meal by myself, and then spend more hours cleaning up. Before my mother got Alzheimers, she’d come over and bring Pecan pie – my favorite. Unfortunately she also brought her bum of a husband which totally ruined the day.

Then one year my husband and I and our kids took our pontoon boat out on the Intracoastal for Thanksgiving Day.   My mother’s idiot husband had stuck her in a nursing home by then, so we really had no family.   Going out on the boat was a good decision and it was such a good day. I hadn’t enjoyed that holiday so much in a long time. I cooked the turkey days before and packed turkey sandwiches for the boat. It was a peaceful day of family togetherness, cruising around and fishing, and I wondered why the holiday couldn’t always be so good.

Happy Thanksgiving to my faithful readers, and to all the ones who stumbled across this post.  May your Thanksgiving Day be yummy and peaceful.