Saturday, December 27, 2008

If you don't like the weather now, just wait 24 hours. It will change!

It was 70 degrees the day after Christmas!


This was the warm (I can't call it "Calm" because it was really windy) before the storm! The weathermen were preparing us for "large hail". Since we are now "hail shy", we crammed as much of the Princess's car in the carport with mine as we could, just in case! We didn't want another damaged car!

Thankfully it was just a bad thunder storm with tons of heavy rain and wind. No hail! The really sad thing is now, 24 hours later it's 30 degrees colder!

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Saturday, December 20, 2008

The Gift of Giving is Really a Gift for Me!

I love Christmas. I love the music, the decorations, the smells, the food, wrapping, and my most favorite is the surprised, thrilled looks on the recipients of mysterious gifts. I cherish the wonderful pictures of a shocked and delighted Princess on many a Christmases.



I love the magic of Santa and how he really knew me when I was a little girl (He must have had an informant). Santa only brought our big gift, never wrapped and always set it up or put it together for special Santa effect. He also filled our stocking with little things and always a family traditional orange.

I love the miracles and special things secret Santas are doing for other families in need. I love the food drives, Toys for Tots, Shop with a Cop, and those Salvation Army bell ringers that are camped out at the entrance of most major chains.

I love the beautiful message of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” (I kind of relate to Imogene), the wonderful fantasy of “The Nutcracker” and the lighthearted comedy “The National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”. I love gingerbread houses, snowmen, lighted court houses, Nativity Scenes, Christmas carols, and fruit cake (my neighbor wins the prize for the best fruit cake in the world!).

I love how Christmas entwines families together from fleeting decades by weaving old traditions with new ones. Reminiscing of Christmases past with Grandparents and sometimes Great Grandparents.

When the Princess was little, I loved that she called it “Chrimas” and each year she wore a big beautiful Christmas dress (sometimes it was hard to get her to not wear it all year long). She has since decided that those billowy dresses should be reserved for Prom and no matter how much I beg she refuses the candy cane tights all together!

I love that she has about a hundred people that she wants to give a gift to. Maybe she gets the same euphoria that I get from watching displays of delight and shock…but my checkbook still doesn’t understand!




Friday, December 19, 2008

Hair Affairs

When the Princess goes to get a hair cut, she sits in the beautician’s chair and says “Just a couple of inches off, please”, while I’m begging them to take about four off to keep it healthy.

For a while she has been telling me that she wants to cut her hair and have a style. She is required by the dance team to keep it long enough to pull up into a pony tail, so I was reluctant for her to cut it too short.

She asked me to make her an appointment at the Beauty College because a girl that she knows (somehow) has a cute hair cut and will be able to cut her hair the same way with her instructor’s help. (Yikes!)

I didn’t go with her. I let her drive there herself and get her hair cut by herself by her friend. I was a chicken! I thought that she would surly cry after it was lopped off. But she LOVES IT! And so do I! And so does her dance coach! Who also told her to make sure that it is long enough to pull into a pony tail by competition next year! So I guess that she is already on the team again next year! Yay!

To my amazement, she was able to donate eight and a half inches to Locks For Love!