NHSuzanne - Those pictures are postcard perfect. What a beautiful sky. I may make those mugs for my college age nieces. Thanks for posting. Raeanne and Patti - The 3 of us should just exchange among ourselves. Patti, I don't have an ornament from you, so maybe you could send to me. I'll send to Raeanne an Raeanne can send to you. How does that sound? My job is sucking the life right out of me, but I have managed to get in the Christmas spirit this week. I am working on Holiday recipe boxes for all the cooks in my family. I found a great site called Shabby Princess with a free download for Christmas recipe cards. I spent most of yesterday (after attending a beautiful Christmas wedding) typing the recipes. Now I need to upload the recipes to Costco, print out the Recipe boxes and put them all together. I posted a link below for anyone who is interested. My house is decorated and most of my shopping is done. I just have some on-line shopping to do for my DS and figure out what DH wants. I bought myself my Christmas present yesterday......a Kitchen Aid mixer. I was using my parent's old mixer, which was a wedding present, 61 years ago. Let's just say it was time to upgrade. LOL I also bought a new lens for my Nikon SLR. DH will be retiring next summer and who knows what the money situation will be, so I treated myself while I still could. I will try to post more often. I have been going into work early, working thru lunch, staying late and bringing work home. Like I said, it is sucking the life out of me. I already wrote my letter of resignation and will turn it in in February. I am ready to quit today, but I know that isn't the right thing for the kids, so I will tough it out until May. Then I can decide what I want to do for the next 2 years until I can retire for good. Who knows, maybe I will find a job that I love and I won't want to retire at all! LOL Later, Marci Here is a link that might be useful: Holiday Recipe Cards

OPh my. I go away for a couple of days, and Raeanne and Suzanne start the French Lick party without me! LOL! For everyone's infomation, all 3 of mine are the truths! (JK!!!LMAO!) I guess Suzanne is # 3 Raeanne is # 2 Well, it is a quiet Saturday night here. Rog went to bed early, and I'm watching Flashdance, and thinking OMG--did I ever really wear torn sweatshirts?? (yep.) I think that's why I love to watch old(er) movies--for just a second, I am back to an age where there wasn't any major problems, and I still believed all people were good, and the whole world was open for the taking. :):) OK--advice needed--mom keeps wanting me to come over and watch some 2+ hours, B&W, 1940 movie with who-knows in it (I've never heard of them). At the risk of sounding like a cold-hearted @#!^%, I have NO (none, el zilcho, nada) desire to do this--heck, I don't even have the time to watch what I actually want to watch, much less this thing. Now, I know how important spending time with her and dad is, and I enjoy just sitting around yapping, but our choices of movies are a complete 180. The last time I got coerced into this, I pr@yed to die of boredom, and then fell asleep. It was a truly aweful movie, and part of me resents being guilted into this. We're fixing Christmas dinner for Christmas Eve to take over, before we go to Midnight services, and mom brought up this d@mned movie again. Gawd, I'll watch it, but I'd rather be sh0t--any suggestions? (I really am not being cold, I would just rather sit around and talk--and she knows this.) Anyhoo--hope this finds everone well! When are we going to reveal the truths? Hugs, Maddie PS--Suzanne, I got your package yesterday, but I couldn't get my x-ray glasses to work! Darn piece of cr@p!! LMAO!!

Happy Christmas Eve! Maddie outdid herself (and her card brought tears to my eyes!). There is a corn stalk angel, a corn cob santa, a hand-painted gold glass ornament, a box of candy, and a lapel pin that is a palm tree with a martini glass under it (where did she get THAT idea?). You can see the pin if you look really hard on the branch on the right side of the angel's head and bottom of candy box. Thank you, dear Maddie! I'll always remember the first photo we all saw of you, highlighted in candlelight at a Christmas Eve service. Ooops, just looked and the silver tree ornament on the right side is mine. Thought I got all mine out of the picture range. Special thanks to Suzanne for walking us through the picture process! Milkdud, I am so happy you liked the ornament. I found it the week you were struggling with your food choices and just could not resist! DH and I will be alone tonight. We'll have a quiet dinner and then light the luminaries to match all our neighbors around the lake. We usually try to walk around in the stillness and just take in all the light. Silent Night, Holy Night....

Jasdip, we free feed dry food and the canned is also Friskies. They had it on sale, $11 for 30 cans, so we usually buy 120-150 cans when they do. One day when were were getting it an older gent was doing the same, he asked how many cats we had and in turn I asked him the same. He said he didn't have any cats that he fed 2 strays, that as long as he could afford to do so he couldn't see any animal going hungry. I liked him.