Come and Gone
Christmas 2010 came and went and I did really enjoy it. Part of that enjoyment came from not being out there fighting the crowds to buy stuff. We did some "cooperative" gift buying online and gave uncreative money gifts to the grands...but no one complained about that!
We got some really special gifts. Our kids chipped in to buy us the electric awning for the motorhome. Neither Jim nor I should be moving the old heavy awning up and down. So that is installed and is absolutely wonderful. Naomi created a scrapbook for us using pictures across the years. Of course, tears came to my eyes. I brought it home and added to the notebook the letters the kids and grands wrote us for our 50th Anniversary. So whenever I have an excess of Kleenex I can just pull out the notebook and review our life from the eyes of the kids. it is very touching and meaningful to read about the impact we've had in the family.
Mary gave each of us a baking certificate gift and since she's such an amazing cook...I'm going to love this. Renee made us some new placemats and gave me some Facebook credits. She gave her Dad a Superman T-shirt because he's still strong and smiling after all the "crap" he's been through this year :)
I think one of the best Christmas memories may be sitting around the "grandma great" table at Renee and Tom's rockin' out to golden oldie songs. It seems that the table encourages sitting long after dinner, talking and even singing. Evan told us he had a song to sing for us and proceeded to belt out "It's a Grand Old Flag" in its entirety! Seems he's learning old patriotic songs in his kindergarten. How awesome is that? :)
The family calendar turned out great! Several people made up pages so I was surprised with new pictures this year. I loved it! We did wind up with some duplicates but that just means those are well loved pictures. You can actually see the 2011 Family Calendar on my Picasa Web Albums page.
So as usually happens, the year is coming to an end and I'm thinking about what to do in 2011. It's really hard to make plans when we have all these health issues and checkups going on but I need plans and goals to look forward to. As we RVers say...plans are made in jello...easily changed and moved. So we'll make some and hope for the best :)