Celebrating Our First December Weekend of 2021....

 I've been steadily working on getting the house all dressed up for Christmas and Saturday we welcomed our first visitors.

Summer, Rayne and Sabrina brought their Rowlett friends over to see all my decorations!

When Trystan (sitting next to Rayne who is wearing her western cowgirl hat) came in the front door, he said, "Oh, Holy Moly!!! She must LOVE Christmas!" 

And so I DO!

They toured the house which is now all decorated except for the guest room and gazebo.

They counted the Santa Claus figures and the Christmas trees - I don't even remember how many there are but Sabrina counted them! We stopped short of counting the wreaths!

Our next activity was a honey tasting on the driveway at our wonderful table out there!

I only had honey from 2019 and 2021 on hand plus some Free Bee honey that came from the bees in the shop next to the camper - which started this whole beekeeping adventure for us!

Hands down, they preferred the honey from this year - but they ate all the samples of 2019 anyway!

We used a package of pretzel O's from Aldi to dunk in the honey.

While we were doing these activities, Summer, Sabrina, and Rayne were stringing up hundreds of white Christmas lights in the front yard!

I've had rolls and rolls of them but always ran out of energy before I got around to the outside - other than the front porch which I keep lit up year round.

Next up?

Caroling!

I handed out Jingle Bells and we walked around the block caroling to our neighbors.

Our special neighbor, Tamara, was so happy to see us!

And the kids were so impressed that she gave them candy!!

We came back to the driveway to visit for a few minutes before it was time for them to leave.

I am soaking up every single minute we have with our Rayne Girl!

It was a Merry Christmas kind of Goodbye!

For some unknown reason, I have been going to bed early and waking up early!

Amazing how that works!

I was in bed asleep well before ****gasp**** 10:00!

So I was not surprised when I woke up at 6:00 this morning!

What DID surprise me, though, was that Louis Dean was up before 7:00!!!

We were up SO early that we had our coffee and Bible and reading time AND spent over an hour  doing our 'projects.' His was outside putting things away from what he used for yesterday's projects and I tweaking my decorating and organizing the things I have left to finish up the guest room and gazebo.

We would have made it to church on time except there was an accident at Beltline Road and I635 so we had to detour! NO worries! Amber and Mike had saved us a seat!

I am committed to attending church every week this month. We always go to church when we are in town but this year I want to go to ALL the December services.

Plus the Christmas Eve service at 3:00....followed by all my children and grandchildren gathering here at home for our traditional celebration.....which includes snacks, visiting, dinner, the Christmas Tree (I'm doing stockings for everyone this year and having so much fun thinking of and finding things that will fit in the stockings!) and ending up with rolling sugar plums and playing NUTS!

Last year Summer was in Puerto Rico so this is a special time where I will hopefully have all my family together in one place and I hope I remember to take lots of pictures!!!

I have been printing my blogs up into year books and I am in 2016 now....I started Linda's Life Journal in January 2010.

I love that I can leave my journals in books that my loved ones can hold in their hands and remember the good times and good memories we all made together.

"We take photos as a return ticket to a moment otherwise gone."

Katie Thurmes

Amber took this cute pic of us.....Louis Dean is so much taller than I am....and he was bending down so we could put our heads closer together.

She also snapped this one as he was holding my face.

It's a wonderful feeling to know one is loved unconditionally. By God and also by 

Louis Dean who always thinks the best of me in any given situation and gives me the benefit of any doubt.

What priceless gifts and I truly believe both are from my Heavenly Father.

I love the photo ops at Fellowship Church!

Amber and I are both wishing you all a Holly Jolly Christmas!!

Thanks to Summer, Sabrina and Rayne for the beautiful lights!!!

Tabitha and Samanath snuck out the front door to look them over tonight, too!

Thankfully they realized they needed to go back inside.......