So it's that time of year when you *blink* and two (or more) days weeks have passed. LOL! Can I get an amen on that?! I always struggle, when I finally make my way back to the ol' blog (which I always do), with what to post. Do I go back and fill in the blanks? Or just pick up at 'today' and pretend nothing happened?
Because I use my blog primarily for me ... as a means to remember events, projects, and life, over the course of the year ... my tendency is to go ahead and fill in the blanks. Case in point: I just stopped blogging after my May 13 post this year. Until October (when I got the itch). And then I went back and BACK DATED at least twenty posts. <insert sheepish grin here> That, my friends, is how I roll. Which I guess answers my original question. Buckle up . . . there are a LOT of photos! ;)
We celebrated Thanksgiving at my folk's house this year. It was Joc's year to celebrate on the day with her in-laws, so we chose to celebrate together on Friday. Since it's more about the giving thanks than the date, it wasn't a problem for us! One of my sisters was even able to fly in with her youngest, and celebrate with us.
The more the merrier, right? Plus it was great-grandpa's first time to meet/hold Ezra!
Four generations . . . oldest and youngest of our family (for the time-being, anyway)! Ezra wanted to spend time with his Pawpaw, though . . .
He really wanted to get a fistful of that beard! Maybe he thought he was being held in Santa's lap??!
We missed our California crew, but they checked in from a Thanksgiving morning walk!
♥
That Sunday evening a group of us traveled out to see the light show at the Toyota Field Stadium. It was a first for me and it was lots of fun!
We would have had a bigger crew, but Everley had stepped on a pencil earlier in the day, and broke 1/2" off in her poor little foot! She's fine ... after a trip to the pediatric ER. Whew!
So the transition from Fall to Christmas kicked off with the lights. Next was the RV decor . . .
I love decorating our little space for the holidays!
I also love this darling little chub-a-lub!
On December 2, we had our Christmas Open House at work. Not only am I on staff, but Todd is volunteer staff, so it's a family affair.
We didn't do it last year (covid), so we were excited to be able to advertise it this year -- but there were still some concerns for keeping it safe. We decided to pre-bag everything we weren't serving pre-packaged.
We did a good job (if I say so myself) and a number of guests commented how much they appreciated our efforts in that regard. My favorite was the pretty little fruit cups . . .
I had the vision for these. Kind of like the
jar-cuterie, only done with just fruit. They were very festive looking and a big hit, plus we found we had a lot less (of everything) leftover this year!
Friday we had a most unseasonally beautiful day. In the 70s with no winds, sunshine with just a tad of cloud cover ... we had planned to hit the lake (in DECEMBER!) but Todd was not feeling well, so we decided to stay home and I headed to the Nook.
I had stitched up a couple of the simple snowman stitchery I'd created for Ellie, and while I'd made a wall-hanging with one, the other was just sitting in the hoop. Rather than leave him there, I decided to use him to make the center of a pillow cover for the completely-out-of-place brown pillow (see RV holiday picture above).
It looks really cute (again, if I do say so myself)! Ellie has decided this is how she's going to finish her project, too!
I feel like we jumped into the season with both feet! Two days later we had our Stitcher's Etc. Christmas party. (This group is different from our guild group; this is a smaller subset.) We had a great group of women gathered—twenty-four in total—which is the biggest gathering we've had in a while!
There was stitching, lunch, an ornament exchange, desserts, show 'n tell and more stitching! Grand time.
And both my "affirmation sisters" were there, too, which was the cherry on top!
These two are precious to me. :)
Then came late Saturday afternoon ... time for the SEC Conference Championship game.
I won't say I wasn't a tad bit anxious going into this game (I mean -- we were the underdog!), but I sure was super-excited about the outcome!
Sunday morning was the second Sunday of Advent. My old Advent wreath was looking a little shabby and covered in candle wax, so I decided to do something a little different this year . . .
The Nativity candle will, appropriately, be my Christ candle. I think it looks pretty and fun and outside the box, which I believe Jesus was (at least as far as the Pharisees were concerned), so totally appropriate!
If you've hung in all the way through this post ... way to go, you! To reward you, leave a comment (make sure if you're a no-reply blogger that you leave some way for me to contact you) and I'll choose one lucky winner to be the recipient of one of the sweet ornaments the girls have made this year:
This is Ellie and Evey's 6th annual ornament fundraiser! The girls made yarn angel ornaments and sold them for $5. I bought four! All proceeds go to
Food for the Hungry, to purchase things like seeds, animals, tools, medication, water purification, shoes, Bibles, and more! The girls select the items and then [Jocelyn makes] Ellie call the order in herself. This sweet little handcrafted angel represents the fulfillment of a basic need.
♥ So I'll make a pick and announce it on Monday!
Whew ... this was long. I need to do a better job of staying on top of this thing!!
:)
