Friday Fragments. Christmas Hangover.

Click the button. You know you wanna. You know you've missed Mrs4444. Go on. Do it! Do it! *** Christmas was good. Christmas Eve was good. Both were busy and I am tired. *** I really enjoyed being part of our Worship services at church this year. We haven't made it to church for Christmas the past few years because of the kids and bedtimes or having a family Christmas with Jeff's family or whatever. But this year, I was part of Music Team for the family service at 7 and the Lessons and Carols service at 11. And I loved it. We didn't have a huge crowd of the "it's Christmas so I have to go to church" crowd. So when I looked out at the congregation... I saw friendly faces, people I love, my church family. It was mildly profound and very loving and joyful for me. *** My kids slept until 6:15 on Christmas morning. It sounds early but that's actually about an hour's bonus for our normal schedule. Even better- Jeff got up with the kids this morning and I slept until 7:45! Heaven! *** I got the Wii Fit Plus upgrade. I got the Jennifer Hudson CD. I got 2 books- Push (which I've already finished and it was awesome) and Say You're One of Them. A board game called Quelf. And a Smothers Brothers book. Those were from Jeff and kids and Brian. *** There had been agreement, I thought, to not do adult gifts at my mom's Christmas. So I bought no gifts. Teagan, while shopping for Jeff's mom, picked out little Christmas salt and pepper shakers for my mom so we gave those to her prior to our meal. Other than that- I bought no gift for my cousin, my brothers, my aunt or my uncle, my dad, my mom. And that was very hard for me. I will confess that I slipped each of my brothers $20 and my cousin $20. But no envelope, no card, no gift wrap- not a Christmas present. But here's the kicker! My mom broke her own rule! She had presents for everyone! *** My mom gave me an ornament- a small, breakable ginger colored dog. We had to put down our lab mix named Ginger Dec 2, 2007. We still miss her a lot and Teagan, Jeff, and I talk of her fondly. My mom, a self-proclaimed non-animal person, misses our dog, too. Loved our dog, too. My mom played in the snow with Ginger. My mom would sit and brush her and brush her. My mom found a little ornament that reminded her of our Be-Jar Gee-Jar... that's a pretty good present. *** The Santa food giving plan worked out perfectly. At bedtime, Teagan dictated a note to Santa: Dear Santa, We got some food for you. We have a lot of it for a lot of people so you can give one thing to each person if you need to. Adios, Teagan When I went to the 11:00 service, I took all the food with me. I had a moment of concern as I realized the food may well still be sitting there on Sunday morning... but figured I could just ask Pastor Jennifer to help me stash it somewhere until it could be delivered to one of the missions projects that needs it. But the plan worked better than I could have imagined! The woman who runs the trustee's office came to the 11:00 service! I asked if she would mind taking the food with her... and she said she and her daughter would not only take it but would stop by the pantry and drop it off before heading home. Santa left Teagan a note back, thanking her for helping him out. It's a new tradition that I feel really good about. *** My husband and my son are on the floor, doing one of the 7 puzzles Zach received. That doesn't count the 3 that Teagan received. And Zach, true to form, has been sitting and doing his new puzzles all morning! *** On our drive to Cincinnati, as we were almost to Grandma's house, we suddenly hit traffic. We saw a police car blocking the right lane and traffic was merging... then the right 2 lanes were blocked... and as we came around the bend... we had a stark lesson in not complaining about traffic and being grateful... there was a vehicle flipped upside down, off the road in a ditch. The tow truck was working on flipping it over. Made me very thankful that my Christmas wasn't that family's Christmas. *** Have you ever stopped to think about how many people have to work on Christmas Day? Newspapers still get delivered. News casts are still reported. Hospitals stay open. Some restaurants stay open. Gas stations stay open. We were very thankful to those people working at gas station and a fast food place near our house on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. And everyone we encountered had a smile on their face. *** Today we go shopping for a new Christmas tree. We've outgrown ours. We bought it because it was tall and skinny and worked well in the limited space of our apartment before we were married. But now we have more ornaments than we can put on the tree and there is hardly any room for presents underneath. So we are hitting the Christmas sales to find a new tree! We also will have our Christmas with Christy later today and this evening we head to Jeff's folks' house for that Christmas. *** Oh- be jealous. I got a gift of Williams-Sonoma hot chocolate and vanilla marshmallows. I think I'll go make some for me and Jeff. Just to help us enjoy our family morning together. *** I feel like I need to put something not-Christmas related in this edition of Friday Fragments but Christmas is my entire life right now! If you've got some time, go visit Mrs4444 and the other Fragmenters!