Christmas 2020

The most wonderful time of the year has come and gone. I'll be busy counting down the next 320ish days until it's time to pull out my santas and deck the halls once again. This time last year, none of us could have guessed the crazy year 2020 would be for our world. And yet God knew. We've all weathered the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic with equal parts steely patience and immense frustration. God's grace has brought our family through to see another Christmas, and we are tremendously thankful for His strength and renewing of our faith.

 

As always, I was so busy hosting my favorite celebration of the year, Christmas Eve, that I didn't get even one picture. My good friend gave me this one above that she snapped of our girls. It's hard to believe we met 19 years ago and we've watched these four grow up to become beautiful young women on the inside and outside. That's a whole lotta long hair and white teeth, lol!

 

 

The husband and younger daughter worked on a 1000 piece Christmas puzzle. The older daughter and her ten pound beast lounged on the sofa. We cooked a huge pot of shrimp and crab gumbo on Christmas Day, with plenty of leftovers. After all of the prep for our evening appetizer palooza with friends/family on the 24th, we enjoyed a low key 25th.

I've been burning all of our Christmas candles, a la seance style, to get them gone by new years. The whole family helped me pack up my santa collection, so it was all put away by noontime on the 26th. I had enjoyed it for a bit more than six weeks and was sad to see it go, as usual. 

The younger daughter's boyfriend flew in for a visit from Charlotte yesterday, so we're hosting him through new years. He's getting entertained Texas style - hog and turkey hunting today, a visit to the lake house for a couple days, attending the game to watch the husband's precious Longhorns play in the Alamo Bowl, and then ending the week in Austin to ring in 2021. I pray it's a fresh start for us all, that God will bring an end to the pandemic and we can get back to a more normal existence. The girls want to take a family trip to Alaska this next summer - sounds like fun to me. I'm ready to get back to my travel bucket list.

I pray God meets you wherever you are in the new year. That you turn to His words in the Bible for guidance and strength. I re-read the book of Luke in December and I was reminded of God's amazing gift to humanity that ensured our salvation, Jesus Christ. I fervently hope you feel His presence, the Holy Spirit, in your life. May you be blessed with health, peace and strengthening faith in all the Lord offers for His glory, both in this life and the next. Oh come let us adore Him, indeed, for He is good and His faithfulness and love endures forever.

Fun with filters

Since the girls won't cooperate, and who can blame them at their age, our dogs bore the brunt of my snapchat filter fun recently. 

 

The college coed and I made a visit to our local fancy seafood market to get some fresh crab and shrimp for our annual Christmas Day gumbo. While we were waiting for our order, we cruised up and down the aisles to check out the rest of their offerings. That's when we spied these humongous frog legs, seen below. According to my mother, fried frog legs are delicious - tastes like chicken. Her daddy would go frog gigging back in the day, while her mom would batter them up for dinner. 

 

As you can see below, we've all been doing a lot of lounging since our holiday week kicked off on Sunday. Our furry family members are either in the midst of us, or milling around mooching for a handout. The husband is loathe to share the homemade Chex Mix my mother whips up in big roasting pans at this time very year, but he has been known to toss them the occasional Cheerio. 

Grand doggie weekend

Our older daughter, the career woman who lives about a 1.5 hr drive from our home in another major Texas city, had a couple social commitments over the next few days. So I volunteered to meet her halfway to fetch her chorkie, Dewey, to stay the weekend with us. He's a rotten little rodent of a dog, who certainly deserves the nickname Sir Humpsalot. Dewey finds everybody sexy - bahaha! Our girl cairn Pepper. Mother's old female pug Ruby. And Ruby's brother Max. Dewey is all about equal opportunity. The only dog he doesn't bother in that way is our male Cairn Ollie, who growls like he means it any time Dewey gets that twinkle in his eye.

Last night I was lounging in bed when Dewey and Pepper decided to curl up on/next to me for some cuddling. The catch is that you can't pet Dewey once he falls asleep. For some reason, he awakens to the belief that he's somehow under attack and will bite the crap out of you. We've decided it's little man chihuahua syndrome.

Lake house holiday edit

The husband and I went to our lake house last weekend to clean up from the ladies trip I hosted for mother. I snapped a couple pics of the edits I made to my holiday decor - mostly Santas, of course. As much as I love Christmas, I may need to begin extending my celebration of all things St Nick to more than six weeks before Dec 25 in the coming years, just to get some extra mileage out of my collection. And also because I just adore this time of year like no other and want to enjoy the spirit of Christmas for as long as possible.

Two of my new favorites for the lake house are the Santa in the vintage wooden boat print and the fun coordinating Radko ornament I found to display alongside it. I'm also digging the early 1900s postcard I framed in the picture above. It's on the console table right inside the front door, a bright little pop of Santa color to welcome visitors to Lake LBJ.

Road(kill) Warrior

When I made a trip earlier this week to take the dogs to the groomer for a bath, I was sitting at a major intersection on the way home and looked up to see a buzzard perched atop the traffic light camera.

He was just chilling there, on the lookout for some recent roadkill, I assume. I often spy these carrion clean up critters perched on street lights in my part of town. Which seems kinda strange in a city with a population of over a million, but there you have it. I guess there are always sufficiently slow possums, squirrels, raccoons, skunks and deer in this area of Texas who can't outrun the automobiles, even in the city, to keep the vultures well fed.

Kicking off the Christmas season

Last weekend I hosted mother and some of her friends at the lake house. That's right, y'all, I'm the BEST daughter! I can only hope one day our girls will be kind enough to include me in their lives like I do with my own mother, even though I'll undoubtedly be a picky old woman who makes them kinda crazy at times. 

We enjoyed visiting several hill country towns, all decked out in their holiday lights. Mother was thrilled with all of the good food she got to enjoy while visiting with long time friends. It even felt like Christmastime, with temps getting pretty chilly at night and us being able to wear long sleeves and jeans, with nary a flip flop in sight.

The BBQ line, pictured above, really cracked us up. Its names deserve a PG 13 rating, but we were told by the shop owner that it's pretty tasty and is a good seller.

Post Thanksgiving thoughts

I'm not sure why, but this year's Thanksgiving feast seemed even more carby than usual. Maybe it was the addition of a pan full of homemade mac 'n cheese to our usual menu that the younger daughter and I whipped up. It was a combination of the Pioneer Woman and Patti LaBelle's recipe, and it was dee-licious. However, I probably ate my weight in our granny's cornbread dressing that my mother whipped up for us. Whatever the case, I walked around with a carb bloated belly for several days thanks to leftovers.

Last month I bought a fancy pants treadmill to join my elliptical in the exercise room. However, I'm still waiting for that sucker to be delivered. Instead of opting for the upgrade console they had in stock, I went with the basic console that had to be shipped from the factory. For sure, our family needs those handlebar thingies on the sides and an extra wide belt on the model I ordered, but not some froufrou color console that winds me down a virtual path like I'm walking. I can pound the pavement in our 'hood if I want the live and in person experience. Alas, I'm still a rat-on-the-elliptical, cranking out 40 miles per week until I can add walking to mix up my exercise routine. Give the old lady gimp hip a break. Now that I've finally shed the 'rona weight, it's time to take a swing at the perimenopausal love handles before we bring on the Christmas goodies later this month.

A Pre-Turkey Day Tale

'Twas the night before Thanksgiving and all through the house, not a creature was stirring except the husband microwaving some leftover pizza because I refused to cook him anything on the eve of our great stuff-your-face feast tomorrow. The doggies were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of mooching for handouts at the Thanksgiving table danced in their heads. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and to all a good night!

Lake house holiday cheer

In a couple weeks I'm hosting a small gathering of friends at our lake house, so the husband and I drove up there today for me to put out my santa decor and see if there were any holes that still need to be filled in advance of our holiday ladies weekend. Plus I needed to hand water a couple of the landscaping beds and check the Christmas light wrapped oak in the backyard to make sure our neighborhood tree rats hadn't wrecked my hard work yet again.

I love the santa above that I put on the back porch coffee table, even though he's really Christmas beach themed. Because seriously... who could resist St Nick in his sunglasses, flip flops and old fashioned blue swimsuit.

I looked all over for a double sided Christmas flag in shades of blue to hang off the boat dock, but finally had to give up since I didn't have time to get a custom one made. Maybe next year. This red and gold one will have to suffice. And I'm just lucky my brand new holiday flag didn't get a good dousing since a couple ducks were paddling around beneath our boat dock, unbeknownst to me. They came out flapping and quacking when I was putting up the flag and about scared the bejesus out of me.

These two Fitz & Floyd mugs in the pic below come from a line created back in the early 90s. Back when I started collecting santas at the tender age of 24, my then boyfriend-now husband bought me my first santa cookie jar that I've proudly displayed every year as the collection grew. I found these two matching mugs from that same line on eBay this fall for a steal, Russian santa with the bear, that I took up to the lake house to put at the coffee station as a sentimental reminder of the original one I have here at the big house on the family room bookshelves. 

I gotta say, it's looking pretty done. The only thing I don't really like at this point is the larger dining table decoration because it looks a bit sparse. I think I just need to make a run to one of our local craft stores to get some pretty shatterproof balls to give the tablescape a more finished look. In the pic below, on the bottom shelf, you'll see a cute little Radko ornament of santa in his motor boat that coordinates with a santa boating print I found on Etsy. 

The ornament stand I ordered was way too tall for boating santa, so I brought it back to our primary residence to swap out with a smaller stand I was using in our family room bookshelves for a larger Radko ornament. I also ordered a snowflake front door mat to match the snowflake and wreath combo front door decoration I made. I really think that oughta do it for the lake house this Christmas!

 

Getting lit!

Christmas has come to town at our primary residence in the city! My santa collection is on display, and the outdoor lights were installed, too. Our female cairn terrier, Pepper, spent a chunk of the afternoon going from window to window, watching the light company make a dozen trees into striped candy canes. She'd give them a good barking every once in a while, but was mainly just taking it all in.