Author: Angela

I write so my family will always have letters from home.

December Playbills

Today I came across the programs from our month’s adventures. Now that I have an electronic copy of these, I can throw them away. Isn’t technology grand?

December and June are my months of excavation. I dump out the drawers and files and baskets and try and make sense of it all. Some days it feels like the mail is the enemy… an endless supply of papers invading my house. I learned long ago that the mail must be dealt with every day or pretty soon we become candidates for some talk show on Hoarding.  I still haven’t learned to throw away personal letters or cards. I hoard correspondence in carefully marked boxes in my closet. If you write me a good e-mail, I’ll print that out and save it, too. We’re all allowed a loony habit, aren’t we?

In the spirit of things, I cleaned out the Cub Scout closet at the church tonight. There were newspapers from 1999, a comforter, lumber, countless dried up glue sticks and 20 skeins of yarn.

It feels good to be free from excess… for now, anyway. When June comes I’ll be amazed again at how much paraphernalia we’ve accumulated.

Christmas snapshot

Believe it or not, we didn’t take many photos of our Christmas. We have two and one I won’t be posting. I’ve taken a break, not sure what to share about our lives around December 24-25. Here are a few of my memories:

My favorite moment: Mark, listening to the reading of the Christmas story, silently and carefully handing out Nativity characters to each of us at their mention in the story.

My biggest surprise? My own bookstore: a Kindle. It took my breath away. I may not be keeping a blog anymore; Too much to read.

Most wistful moment? Realizing Paige didn’t receive any toys this year; just clothes and teenager things.

Most beautiful carol? Oh Holy Night, sung by the King’s Singers

The gift I didn’t buy: a new piano bench for Richard

Gift that required the most effort: Caroline’s I Spy Quilt

A cherry on top: a sweet-sounding rental violin on which to fiddle

Books I’ve read over the past few days: A Christmas Carol, The Importance of Being Earnest, Little Women

Nativity Puppets

Using my Aunt Kate’s concept from the nativity blocks she gave our family about 14 years ago, I occasionally make these felt nativity pieces for friends. This time, my friend was looking for something she could use for a puppet show on Christmas Eve, so I glued craft sticks to the backs. I think they are cute. The little ones love to hold them, crookedly and charmingly.

Someone is Seven

Timothy turned 7 years old today. We celebrated by decorating graham cracker houses and eating spaghetti for dinner. He celebrated by playing with a new Lego set all day.

Here are the graham cracker houses we made. If you want to see one up close, select the photo by clicking on it and then click on it again.

Fieldtrip to the Butterfly Gardens

We visited the Tucson Botanical Gardens and Butterfly Garden yesterday. We spent an hour with the butterflies, only to find that our group had given up on us coming out and had gone home. We had a swell time. We watched a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis, a male butterfly show off for a female, and we held a few butterflies. My favorite moment was when Timothy, frustrated with the tour guide who ignored our pleas to let him hold one, grabbed a butterfly himself (in the same manner the guide showed us). It was a brilliant breaking of the rules that I applauded. You shouldn’t have to be a beautiful woman in a business suit to get to hold a butterfly, for heaven’s sake.

Teaser

Christmas with the Rosses

In an effort to skyrocket our family right into your hearts, we are going to share a segment from our Annual Christmas Video For the Grandparents (gasp!) on this very blog.

Pour yourself some eggnog, put on your slippers and tune in on December 23.

Stop, Rewind, and Delete

It would be nice if I could redo this evening. However, like adolescence, I wouldn’t want to go through any of THAT again, so I guess I’ll just fast forward to tomorrow and hope for better presentation, motives, and methods.

Continuing with the remote control theme, let’s go channel surfing in my brain. *disclaimer* The following thoughts, views, ideas, and expressions are  not to be taken seriously…

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Paige was on the front page of the newspaper today in prima ballerina glory.

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I think Christmas Card giving has all but died. I have heard from a small collection of friends. Our cards remain on the shelf, not quite finished. Maybe I should get back on Facebook so I can receive everyone’s wishes electronically.

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I really don’t want to read about Mao and the Communists tonight… or tomorrow.

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Food drives! Food drives! Food drives!

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Daniel needs a challenge.

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I wonder if the dentist will notice that Timothy’s neck is filthy tomorrow during his appointment.

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This is a test of the emergency broadcast syst—

*DOUBLE CLICK*

(band playing Auld Lang Syne.)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz