Christmas is Coming!

We were up remarkably early for us Monday morning!

I should say, LOUIS DEAN was up early! It was not even 6:00 when he asked me if I was ready for coffee! ?? Really?? Apparently he didn't get a lot of sleep.....which is not good for him....or me!

We checked out of the motel a good two hours before we had to and headed over to HEB to buy the ingredients for Texas Trash. All those Chex cereals are hard to find sometimes.

We drove by Chandy's work on our way out of town.

Look at that sweet cherubic face!

Chandy is such a good mother!

Bella 'works' with her and has her own little 'office space.'

It makes my heart happy to see these two together again.

We could not be prouder of Chandy and Chris and their beautiful 'Yours, Mine and Ours' family.

I didn't want to use this pic from HEB as the first one in the post!

We bought everything to make sugarplums, too.

Would you believe oatmeal is an ingredient in sugarplums aka chocolate butter!?

We took turns driving home and thank goodness we did not have to deal with a setting sun since we were going east! It was 4:00 when we pulled in the driveway. I unloaded a few things - leaving the bags of groceries in the car since they weren't perishable - and then headed straight to bed!

We both rested a few hours before getting up and starting laundry and putting things away.

It was wonderful to come home to no surprises!

I did a bit of cleaning in our bedroom before we had a snack and watched Bull and went to bed.

I'm not waking up as early as I was there for awhile.

It was 9:00 when I turned my coffee on.

Louis Dean was still sleeping.

He has the hardest time with insomnia.

I usually sleep fairly well and if I can't - I get up and have a glass of wine and then I fall right to sleep.

Brenda and I try to have lunch together every month and today was our day.

Chandy and Chris had sent us home with some of the delicious brisket from the weekend.

I chopped it up and added the BBQ sauce and let it simmer in a small crockpot. I brewed up the tea and made two salads - one garden and one fruit.

It was cold today and really cold this morning.

I baked potatoes the old fashioned way by rubbing them in Crisco and sprinkling sea salt on them and cooked them in the oven. That helped warm up the house, too.

We had a good lunch! Louis Dean sat with us at the dining room table.

An hour is never long enough to really catch up so we planned an evening out soon and that includes the guys.

As soon as the table was cleared, I went up to K Hair to get my hair cut!

I had been putting it off as long as possible since I wanted it short when I have surgery, but over the weekend it had hit that 'I can't STAND this' stage and I was SO excited to have Yulisa give me a great cut.

This pic was taken 11 years ago and it came up in my memories this morning.

I thought, "I want that same cut again!"

I didn't show Yulisa the photo until AFTER she finished my hair!

Perfect!!! She is such a great stylist!

I still needed the WHEAT Chex and found them at Kroger this evening.

I couldn't resist the Rosemary 'trees.' We have two bushes already but I dearly love rosemary and these were 50% off! I'm going to use them inside the house this winter and then plant them in the herb garden come spring.

Tomorrow is TRASH day!!

Tonight I made the fruitcake cookie dough and it looks like I'm running out of room to date it!

I'm going to need an extra fine tip pen!

The dough is bagged up and Louis Dean put it in the mini fridge out in the gazebo.

With all this Christmas baking and preparing, the fridge is getting crowded!.

I had a really good day and my knee felt better than it has in weeks.

I even walked normal today!

I'm going to go to bed now so I can get up and get with it in the morning.

It's cold but blue skies are in the forecast so I am going to make a batch of divinity before I tackle the Texas trash. Cloudy days are not good days to make candy!