Our Holiday in Review

Christmas at my house was a very quiet one. Rita was here all day with me. Joe and Jan stopped in during the afternoon. We talked with both Ruth and Kitty on the phone. It was a very nice day, in touch with all of our loved ones.



Here is a photo of Rita, and one of her favorite gifts - a Santa statue from Joe and Jan.









Here I am, and one of my favorites - a flameless candle from Lisa.







And of course, here are some from California. They start with Mike's birthday, which falls on the first day of winter. He's taking in a deep breath in order to blow out the candles.








Then there is their tree. Looks as if Santa had already arrived when this was taken.








And Isaac, trying on a Santa hat.







Then one of his favorite gifts - a crane. Some kind of heavy construction about to go on here.


What is not shown here is his big gift from Mommy and Daddy, which was a remote control aquatic car that looks like a manta ray.









After much of the initial excitement was over, their family spent some time at Asilomar Beach, exploring tide pools.




Here is the beach boy.











And here are he and his dad, doing their thing.











I think I could thoroughly enjoy spending Christmas Day at Asilomar.

Breather Between Holidays

I guess you could call it a breather. I still feel as if I'm going...going...going...

Hope everyone of you had as wonderful a holiday as I had. Those who celebrate Kwanzaa are still going with it. The rest of us are trying to sit back and gather our strength for the next one I suppose.



Santa was good to me. He even put a wonderful Air Lingus plane in my stocking. He always remembers to put a plane of some kind in my stocking. He knows I love to fly. This one lights up and makes the sound of a take-off. Well - we must have our toys at Christmas.



Among my other gifts was a beautiful new hummingbird feeder for next spring. I never had one like this before. I'll be interested to see which feeder they are attracted to.





Of course, we have pictures from California, where Isaac was visited by St. Nick as well. I think Mom and Dad were a little pleased that the Postal Service did not manage to get all the east coast gifts from various aunts and uncles to him in time. He had plenty without them, and it gives a little breather before the arrival of a new batch of toys . Some did arrive in time. (Mine did!) But Santa also brought him a track and toy cars and trucks, and a big wheel and a number of other things.




I had to laugh at this one though. This is his dad, happily playing with the tiny dog I had sent his son.











They did not spend all of their time at home. They took advantage of some sunshine between rain storms - Yes, even in usually sunny Monterey - and went over to Pacific Grove for some fresh air. Isaac spent some time on the beach.







And some time just sitting in a tree, enjoying Monterey Bay.

















Meanwhile, back at my son's house critters were part of the festivities as well as people. This pair would be Leo (cat) and Eli (dog). They get along pretty well most of the time.



But they are not alone. There is also Murph, seen here with a small child.





Murph does not confine himself to visiting toddlers. He likes to climb over adults as well. Ruth normally looks much prettier than this. She was in the midst of a story about yet another cat, illustrating its expression of...what, I'm not quite sure, when Murph decided to pay her a visit, resulting in what I find to be the amusing picture of the week.









Say, remember when I showed you my "Dr. Seuss plant"? It was my mandevilla, brought in out of the cold, which decided to go crazy in my living room. Then I was crazy enough to decorate it for Christmas. Twelve days ago, on the 16th, it looked like this.



Now it looks like this.




Here's a close up of its curly top .
What do you think? Will it eventually take over the living room? Will the new year find me hacking my way out with a machete? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to this adventure.

Happy Christmas

To all of my Christian readers, I wish the Happiest of Christmases.








May the Peace of the season fill all our hearts and remain with us throughout the coming year.


PEACE ON EARTH - GOOD WILL TO ALL MEN

Happy Birthday

Christmas is almost here!

Although December 25th is an arbitrary choice of dates - who really knows when Jesus was born? - we should remember that Christmas is the day we celebrate as His birthday. That's what it's all about - the partying, the gift giving, the whole thing. We do tend to forget this in today's world.


When our kids were growing up we always had a birthday cake and ice cream on Christmas, just as we always had at any birthday party. I have a set of small tier cake pans, and a pedestal to put the tiers on. Nothing huge - a very small cake. I usually iced it in white with sprinkles, and topped it with one birthday candle. When they were little, we sang Happy Birthday before we cut the cake.

For some reason, I do not seem to have taken any pictures of that cake, so I can't show it to you, but I'm sure that isn't necessary.


Before the big day we also had an Advent Wreath. And I made a set of ornaments for the tree, some of pellon, some of heavy paper. A star (because he was Jewish - a lot of people tend to forget that too), the sun, the crown and scepter, the lamb, and various things to represent Biblical events such as the apple minus a bite, Jonah in the whale, Jacob's ladder, manna, the Arc of the Covenant, the burning bush, Noah's ark, the three wise men, the town of Bethlehem, several others. I believe if a tree is decorated in this way it's called a Jesse Tree. They were always the first ornaments we put on our tree.

Over the years some have become very badly discolored and marked up.


We should not forget the Old Testament. We should not forget that the Holy Family was Jewish. We should not forget His roots. We should not forget that it was not the Jewish people, but the Romans who persecuted Him. Somehow, over time, some people's thinking has become twisted on this point. The Holy Family were good Jews, always practicing their Faith. What we know as The Last Supper was actually a Seder. Their devotion is a good thing for us to remember at this time.




Sorry. I don't mean to preach. The season brings it out in me I guess, and I think I'm instructing my children again.

A Christmas Sled

As I mentioned in a recent post, my brother was a member of the Army Signal Corps during World War II. His two best buddies were, one in the Navy and the other in the Marine Corps. Thankfully, all three came home in one piece. Just having them all home again was Christmas present enough that year.

I must have been eleven or twelve that Christmas. Some years earlier, my mother, brother and I had moved into a second floor apartment. Mother and I had twin beds and shared the big master bedroom, and Bill had his own room - briefly. We had only been there about a year when the war began, and Bill was on his way to a four year stint in the armed service. That meant that I had my own room for four years. I was so happy to see him come home that I didn't really mind too much giving it up again for a while, until he was married.

I'm not sure how it happened that on Christmas Eve I was sleeping alone in the back bedroom again, but that's how it happened. Mother and Bill did much whispering together all day. Apparently there was something special for me in the works! And that is how it happened that I saw their surprise. I did not go to sleep as early as they thought. When my brother went down to the basement of the apartment house and carried the new sled up the fire escape, he had to pass the back bedroom window, and I saw it. This was a very big deal to me at the time! I had wanted this particular sled for ages, and there was plenty of snow that year. There were still shortages of one thing or another because of the war. I guess the metal runners made it hard to get or something. It was all I could do not to bounce out of bed, but I managed to wait until morning and to act surprised when I saw it under the tree. What's more, there was also a pair of ice skates to go with it! They were another still-hard-to-get item. That was a really, really good Christmas!

Christmas Memories

Until I was six years old, this is the house that I lived in. Of course, this photo was taken when my parents first bought the house. By the time I came along, you have to picture it with landscaping. The porch faced the street, and all along that side of it were barberry bushes as high as that porch. Privet hedge ran along the sidewalk. On the side of the porch along the walk leading to the front door was a little garden which was always full of tulips in the spring. On the other side of the house and in the back, gardens were full of flowers. The photographer must have been standing in the driveway, which was lined with big forsythia bushes. They had grown so tall and full, drooping down to the ground, that we could go inside of them. We pretended they were a row of houses, and visited our dolls residing inside each one.


But my post today is not of spring or summer. It's about Christmas. You can see the chimney. In the living room we had a wonderful fireplace. There were french doors on either side of it, leading out to the porch. We hung our stockings on the mantel above the fireplace, and in the far corner of this picture we had the Christmas tree. It was always a huge one, reaching the ceiling. Directly opposite the tree was the staircase leading to the second floor. A few steps led up to a landing before making a right turn to the hall upstairs.


The Christmas I am recalling today, I was a sick little girl. It was either mumps or chicken pox - I don't remember which. All I remember is that they got me out of bed on Christmas morning and led me down the stairs to the landing. They made a huge fuss about how exciting it was. Santa had come! I looked at the tree below, mumbled that it was pretty, turned around and went back to bed. They went down and got my stocking and brought it up to me, but I wasn't very interested in it. I just wanted to go to sleep. My parents and sister and brother were very disappointed. Of course, in the next day or so I was feeling much better and ran down the steps and tore into the presents. I think that was the year Santa brought me the little horse. It wasn't a proper rocking horse. It was a horse's head, with a seat for me attached to a thick metal band that let me bounce up and down. It lasted about a week, when my friend Jack rode on it too rambunctiously, and it broke. Again, I remember the grown ups were extremely disappointed, while I just said, "That's OK, Jack", and was more concerned that he shouldn't feel too bad. Anything Jack did was OK with me. If it had been my brother, I'm sure I would have been furious.



I remember every inch of that house. The fireplace was the best. When we came in from a day of sledding or building a snowman, we snuggled up in front of the fire to get warm. My mother would bring us hot cocoa and cookies, and sometimes we toasted marshmallows. We always went sledding on the golf course, which was quite a distance from our house. I can't tell you just how far it was. I'm sure distances were much greater when we were little children, and it's been many years since I visited that part of the country. All I know for sure is that by the time we decided we should go home, our boots and mittens and hats and hair were caked in ice and snow, and we trudged what seemed to be a long, long way to reach home. We couldn't wait to get in front of that fire. Cocoa and cookies never tasted better than they did on days like that. We got our fronts all toasty warm, and then turned around and toasted our backs. It was wonderful!



The picture of the child peering up the chimney is from Webshots.
And this particular snowman is one I built 7 years ago.