Our First Outing in over 10 Days!

 I was surprised when I looked back over my written diary and discovered the last time I had been anywhere was on November 28th when we attended the girls' hockey tournament!

Louis Dean has been to Walmart and Kroger to pick up this and that but I have stayed home until yesterday!

Wednesday I baked cookies and boxed them up to take to the Bells on Thursday.

We left here around 1:00 in the afternoon and did a multitude of errands......

dropped Christmas cards off at the post office...

cashed a check at the bank - we are so old school we don't even have a debit card!

filled the car up with gas....

had the car washed....

shopped Walmart for some essentials!

Louis Dean laughingly says 'we are dangerously close to being out of wine!'

Well, Wednesday he was not only close - he was completely OUT!!

While he only drinks box wine, I usually prefer mine in bottles, so I graciously shared some with him but that's the reason we were at Walmart - mostly - was for the wine!

From there we went to Hobby Lobby where all their Christmas is 60% off!

I picked up nice paper plates to use on  Christmas Eve that will make clean up easier, as well as some other debris!! I should have bought more ornaments as I have tossed so many out and I have so many trees and some are still bare.

I have a shopping day planned for Monday now.

Thursday morning Louis Dean and I had a package apiece of those orange crackers with peanut butter along with our coffee - and that was ALL we had to eat until nearly 5:00!

SO we grabbed a Whataburger and they were good!

I got the smallest one they have and HE got the biggest!

We headed over to the Bells in time to ride with  them up to the school to see the Fall Ensemble Performances!

The three girls were in two different dances and both were so good!

They have been practicing since school started and I have been watching them do their routines out in the front yard when I would be over visiting. All the performers have put an incredible amount of work into this performance.

While the girls are in dance, Harrison is in theater!

Here come 'de JUDGE!!!!

It was fun to sit together as a family - both sets of grandparents and the parents - to watch.

By the time the program was over and we were back at the Bells. it had started to rain so we headed straight home and pretty much straight to bed. I'm still getting so sleepy every night around 6:00!

This has been a Stay at Home day and I confess - I never even dressed! Yup! Still wearing my nightgown from last night! Although I ALWAYS add earrings and perfume - no matter WHAT!!

Tonight I will shower and simply put on a clean nightgown - and I may wear it all day tomorrow as we are planning on decorating the gazebo. That's our last thing to do!

This morning I talked to my sister Deanie on the phone and we had such a nice visit.

We are getting old together and still laugh and talk and have fun and I believe we always will.

I changed sheets and washed all the 13 pillow cases/shams for the bed.

It is ridiculous how many pillows I put on there.

There's the two we put our heads on....then the 11 we have shams and cases for and they all go on the bed in a certain order.

I'll take a pic of it tomorrow but you get the idea. 

That's a LOT of pillows!

As Louis Dean says EVERYTIME he helps me make up the bed.

I also cleaned the fridge in preparation of grocery shopping next week.

Laundry and routine cleaning and then sitting for a couple of hours addressing Christmas cards.

I started from the back of the address book and am not all the way up to the first part of the alphabet.

Last year I ran out of cards but that will NOT happen this year.

What I have left over, I am thinking of taking to the nursing homes and handing them out along with a muffin or some cookies. Maybe I'll drive over to Fort Worth to the Trail Lake Nursing Home where I have spent so many hours in past years. That's a good idea.

I think I have 13 decorated Christmas trees in the house plus there will be one in the gazebo tomorrow.

Not all are decorated as elaborately as this living room tree...... 

It is our favorite this year and Louis Dean claims it's the prettiest one we have ever done.

It looks Victorian to me.

I have a lot of memory ornaments displayed on this one.

It holds my oldest ornaments and most of my hand painted ones.

A Texas theme I did one year.

I painted Big Bird in 1986 as he was Amber's favorite thing that year.

She had a talking Big Bird and loved him dearly!

You may notice this is a glass ornament and there's a hole on the upper top right.

So many of the ones I did broke - not a good idea to paint them on delicate glass balls.

Louis Dean and I went out tonight and drove up to the post office where we dropped a big stack of Christmas cards in the mail.

I hope to finish all the cards this weekend.

Thank you, all my dear readers for being such sweet friends to me. I hope you know what a blessing you are to my life and what strength and encouragement I receive from you. You all have made this year a little easier to bear. I admit to being a bit blue as we approach Christmas. I'm been decorating because that's what I do. It's a therapy and keeps me being 'me.'

I want to honor my sister Nita in all that I do and she would want us to keep doing and being and loving and laughing and talking. Still, sometimes it takes my breath away when I realize I'll never see her face or hear her voice or her chuckle or her laugh. She was so precious to so many. 

I know personally that many of you sweet friends have experienced this same kind of devasting loss and I hold you in my heart and in my prayers.