HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

We are off to baby sit a couple of our grandchildren for New Year's Eve, so I will probably have more pictures soon. Tomorrow we go to help celebrate Son #2's birthday (which is really today) and that will ensure MORE pictures!

Meanwhile, I liked this meditation from Richard Rohr for the New Year:
When we celebrate New Year’s Day, we celebrate the rebirth of time.
We wait for our God to do new things.
We wait for who we are, and who we are to become.
We wait for the coming of grace, for the unfolding of Mystery.
We wait for the always bigger Truth.
We wait for the vision of the Whole.
But we cannot just wait. We must pray. Our prayers then start naming and defining us. When we hear our own prayers in our own ears and our own heart, we start choosing our deepest identity, our biggest future, and our best selves.

CHRISTMAS FUN!

We had Son #1 and family here for Christmas and we had lots of fun! Son #1 has two of the sweetest, most polite, gentle teenagers I have met in a long time. It is so rewarding to see my own children raising such wonderful children.

Son #1 with Grandson #1, waiting for everyone to gather for opening presents.

Granddaughter #1, all ready for unwrapping presents.

Son #1 obliged by wearing the reindeer antlers--so cute!

Daughter-in-Law #1 looks pretty in her antlers with the pretty white bow!

And one of the best presents of all is that Son #1 helped Hubby finish rewiring for my new washing machine and it is all hooked up and being very much appreciated! I am not sure THEY enjoyed that part of Christmas evening, but I was very grateful!

I was sorry to see everyone leave this morning, but now my new washing machine is buzzing away with all the sheets and towels being washed, thanks to my sweet daughter-in-law who stripped the beds and gathered up all the towels before they left!

A NEW BOOK!

This is not a book of mine, but one that I helped get published. I have a friend, Lawrence Seeger, who is almost 82 and is very literate. He reads all the time, does some writing of his own, lots of genealogy and, after I had introduced him to the rictameter form of poetry, began writing several rictameter poems each week.

A rictameter consists of nine lines of poetry with no rhyme required. The poem starts with two syllables for the first line and increases two syllables per line until line five has ten syllables. The lines then decrease by two syllables a line until the final line has two syllables. The first line and the last line are identical.

An example of one of his poems is:

Poems
Are fun to write
They just pop in my mind
They're like popcorn in a popper
They fill up the pan and then flow over
The words are like kernels of corn
I love making poems
They're really great
Poems!

After I had accumulated about 50 poems in my e-mail in-box, I suggested that we organize the poems into a booklet, add some pictures and self-publish the book through Lulu.com in time for Christmas gift giving. Lawrence was excited about the task and together we assembled an exciting book for his family for Christmas.

Lawrence and his best friend, Laurie!

If you are interested in ordering the book, it is listed at Lulu.com, and it is listed as "Lawrence's Rictameters." Congratulations, Lawrence!!

A GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL

We got together with two of our boys today for a pre-Christmas celebration and had a great time! Son #2 and family joined hubby and me and Son #3 here in the Panhandle. It was a beautiful day, we ate heartily of the goodies Son #3 provided, and then we did our Christmas gift exchange and had lots of good fun watching the children and the dogs play. Here are a few pictures from our wonderful day:

Son # 2 and family.

Son #2 leading us all in Christmas songs.

Son #3 opening one of his gifts with help from Little One.

Soph helping Nero join in the festivities.

Hubby with Son #3 and Son #2.

And a good time was had by all. Yawn!

DECORATING, DECORATING

We spent last evening helping Son #3 finish decorating his tree for our gathering with Son #2 and family today.

VISITING THE KIDS

We have started our visits with our children and grandchildren for the holidays. On Thursday we went to visit Son #4 who has been a firefighter and see him graduate from an academy (he is the tall on in the back. We are not sure where he got his height but we can always spot him because he stands out in a crowd!) and be sworn in as a fire and arson investigator.

We were very proud of him and enjoyed seeing that Miss Ella Bella is in good health and her little brother is growing up way too fast!

We are very proud of Son #4 and now we are on the way to the Panhandle to celebrate with Sons #2 and 3.

ALL IS CALM...?

I borrowed the title for this post from my friend, Melody who has posted a link to some great suggestions for a less stressful holiday season. When I read the list of "stress busters" I realized that I was breaking MOST of the rules. I promised myself that I will try to implement those rules in my life TODAY and hopefully lessen the stress that we all experience during this season. I hope your holidays are joyful and CALM!

PAINTINGS

I have finished several paintings lately and finally got some great pictures of them. I have a new camera and it takes wonderful pictures of my paintings. I will share a few with you. Most are from my "flower period." I saw some oil paintings of single flowers on a black background in Santa Fe last summer and decided to do my own set. I have completed four. I did the rosebud back in the summer and took that picture with my old camera. The others are more recent. The last one I did was the iris and it is my very favorite.

I also did one of a red hibiscus with a green background. It had fun with it!

In the fall I painted a landscape of Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, NM. I took the picture when we were there last June. Bet it does not look that warm there today!

More recently I discovered water colors and am having a grand time exploring the possibilities with that medium. I have not figured out how to achieve the detail with water color that I like, but I am looking forward to seeing what I can learn once the holidays are over. Right now I am up to my ears in creating Christmas gifts, baking, wrapping, decorating.

BREAKING, BREAKING

Let's see: the week started out Sunday with an early a.m. call from Son #2--his well went out and they had frigid temps and no water. Next Son #1 called and the engine (or motor or whatever) went out on his vehicle. Monday dawned with lots of fog and drizzle and our hot water heater went out. Hubby got it fixed and I decided to do a load of laundry. Soon I heard a loud screeching noise, opened the garage and it was filled with smoke. Washing machine went out loaded with dirty clothes and water. Wednesday Son #3 called to say that the soreness in his leg turned out to be a broken tibia and then Son #4 called to say that they returned home last night to find water standing in puddles from a broken water main. What's with all this breaking?? Seems like our family is setting some kind of trend or something.

Hubby is now out wending his way through all the washing machine options. He left a while ago with a yellow pad, the newspaper ads, and lots of notes from the internet, my brother-in-law, our children, and all the other advisers who have put their two cents worth in to help us decide what we need. Used to be simple to buy these things. Now the choices out there are staggering. I stayed home to work on Christmas presents. I think the washing machine will be my early Christmas present!

NO SNOW!

Well, a few flakes. I took a few pictures of the big flakes falling down around our banana trees (that will freeze tonight!) as the sun came out and I cannot see one flake in the picture. Sigh! And yet, down on the coast our kids saw LOTS of snow. Sigh!

EXPECTING SNOW???

The weatherman says that we can expect some snow tomorrow. At the gym this morning the girls' dressing room was abuzz with talk about possible business closings, school closings, hurrying out to shop, what emergency items to buy and so on. And, NO, we do not live in the far north. We just live in an area that sees freezing weather infrequently and snow about every ten years or so. People around here get excited about snow in the weather forecast!

If it DOES snow, the roads will probably shut down because people just do not know how to drive in the stuff. That means that schools and businesses will also close but lots of people will continue to get out and that leads to lots of fender-benders on area roadways and broken bones from slipping on icy sidewalks.

If it DOES snow I will take lots of photographs because I almost NEVER get to take pictures of snow around here because we almost NEVER have snow here!

Can you tell I am excited about getting some snow? I am going to make a big pot of soup, some bread and maybe even a decadent dessert. I am going to bring in some of that new oak we have stacked in our backyard, build a nice fire and make a big mug of hot apple cider to help me "weather the storm." Or, rather, the few snowflakes we have--if we are lucky!