'Twas the Week Before Christmas...

A week from tonight Santa comes! How exciting!!! I love Christmas, what it means, the anticipation, family gatherings, decorations and all the good stuff. But I have to get through the not so good stuff in the next few days....wrapping gifts! The first few are fun to wrap and decorate, but after a while, it gets....well, tiring. But that's on my agenda tomorrow and Friday (if I don't finish tomorrow). On Sunday we're having our family Christmas dinner. It's something we've done for as long as I can remember. It's always been a candlelight dinner, and in years past, we used real candles clipped to each person's dinner plate. Fun, but tricky to not catch your sleeve on fire as you reach for something across the table. Since we've had grandkids, we've gone to battery candles. It's much safer. The grandkids totally look forward to the candlelight part of the dinner. Every year they ask if it's time for the candles. We use real dishes (no paper for this meal!), cloth napkins and stemware. Of course, the grandkids have their own special dinnerware. I even have Christmas silverware. Many years ago I found some made by Debbie Mumm with Santas and snowmen on the handles. We always have ham and various side dishes. This year is no different. The best part now that the kids are all grown is that they contribute by bringing the side dishes. Everyone chooses something they're really good at, so we get the best of each family. This year there will be 19 of us. Dad and Aunt Dovetta will join us again this year. The kids always request that Aunt Dovetta bring her yummy broccoli salad and spiced nuts. Dan usually makes the traditional green jello salad. Brian and Kamille are bringing potatoes....my guess is that it will be funeral potatoes...Brian's favorite. Erin's making dilled carrots. Yum! And for "dessert" we're having our favorite Christmas candies...peanut butter balls and 7-layer bars. Christmas dinner is always a big deal, even if it's not always on Christmas day. This year we're trying something new. We're going to have a Nativity play. We have the costumes and props ready and the grandkids will play the parts. We decided (so there aren't any hard feelings) that we'd let the kids pick their part "from a hat" and we'd do the play as many times as we need to so that everyone gets to play their "favorite" part. I hope it works out well.
Sunday is Emma's 6th birthday. It's hard to believe she's six already.
Since it's her birthday and they'll be here already for dinner, she'll be having her sleepover that night. We're excited! I don't know yet what she'll choose to do or what she'll choose for her gift, but I know it will be a lot of FUN!! Happy birthday, Emma!
Mark had a fun day today with Eliza. Her class at school was making gingerbread houses from graham crackers. Each child could choose one family member to invite to school to help build and decorate their house. She chose her grandpa! They even made special invitations for their honored guests. Mark couldn't turn down that kind of offer, so he arranged his schedule and went to Eliza's school this afternoon. Their house turned out cute and it held together well. I think her favorite part was that she got to ride home in his DARE truck! What a fun treat!
My excitement today was a change of hair color. I used to color my hair all the time, but for the past several months I've tried the au naturalle look. It's been okay, but I don't like the texture of my gray hair....it's too wirey, if that makes any sense. So today, Amber colored my hair again. It's more on the red side than before, but it still has the blonde highlights. She said the color value is the same as before, but the tone is different. It seems much darker to me, but that could be because I've been used to boring, dull gray. I'll get used to it...and I hope everyone else does, too. The texture is WAY better now. And if my hair is happy, so am I!
Finally, Mark and I have been listening to another book on CD. It's called Mary and Joseph by Robert Marcum. We tried listening to it this past summer, but for some reason neither of us could connect with the book. So we set it aside and tried again this month. I'm so glad we waited. It was a wonderful fictional version of the story of Mary and Joseph (and of Christ as a child). I would definitely recommend it. We finished it tonight and we were both sorry to have it end.