Lydia’s dress is now done; Hannah finished her sparkly crocheted rose and leaf appliques; and I sewed them on. That done, everybody dressed in their best Christmas duds and, yesterday afternoon, I took the Christmas pictures. We rushed them off to the one-hour developing center at Wal-Mart. Now we’ve chosen our favorite and will order the reprints and enlargements tomorrow. That’s one of my favorite Christmas jobs. Trouble is, we need more wall space on which to hang all these 11x14’s!
At the end of the photography session, Teddy, rubbing at his cheeks, queried, “Have we smiled the clouds away yet?” (Those are the words of a dumb song of which I am not particularly fond, which he well knows.)
Saturday I started sewing Hester and Lydia’s Christmas dinner dresses; they are about half done, so I’m hopeful I’ll be able to complete everything, after all. Two days last week were taken up doing bookwork, and one afternoon we took Hannah and Joseph to the doctor. They both had acquired bad colds, and every time Hannah gets a cold, it triggers a bout with asthma. They are still under the weather, and seberal ub da rest ub us are in barious stages ub da same code, I think.
Tuesday morning, Larry left for Guthrie, Oklahoma, where he got a pickup for one of our customers. (Or, as Caleb said, “He picked up a pickup! He’s pickin’ up a pickinup! Pickin’ a pickup up! hahahahahaha”)
At 1:30 A.M. Wednesday morning, I called him on his cellular phone to inform him that I80 and other secondary roads in southeast Nebraska were totally ice-covered, and semis were littering the ditches, and several were tipped over. He was just approaching Concordia, Kansas, and it was sleeting and the roads were getting slick. But the crewcab is sure-footed, especially so because it is a dually, and that big loaded trailer gave it even more traction. When Larry arrived home about 6:00 A.M., he said he had seen many cars and trucks slipping and sliding all over the road; but his rig never skidded once.
Tuesday Keith put our Christmas lights up on the eaves, porch railing, and around the door frame and garage door of our house. He even put lights on our little blue spruce in the front yard. It looks quite cute.
Friday we scooted furniture around, scratched our heads, scooted furniture this way and that, scratched our heads, scooted it back again, (on and on, ad infinitum), until finally we put the big chair in the front hallway, where it fits just fine if you don’t mind barking your shins on it every time you come around the corner and forget it’s there. We put the love seat in the corner beside the hearth, where it works just fine as long as you’re an amputee (or less than four feet tall); and we slid the smaller computer desk farther into the corner, where it functions just fine so long as you didn’t put something you needed into the now-covered-up cubbyhole on the side of it. By the end of this exercise, we had turned up a small gap in furniture right in front of the window.
Deeming this gap wide enough, we snatched up our Christmas tree and ran headlong into the living room, where we set it up as fast as ever we could, before the over-abundance of furniture began encroaching upon our designated tree location. I’m telling you, we have enough stuff in this house to fill up the Chateau d’Wintertuk, we do!
Well, the littles promptly went to hanging decorations, exclaiming delightedly over forgotten treasures and little works of art they and the older children have created throughout the years. Directly I noticed that the preponderance of ornaments were hanging heavily on the bottom half of the tree; so I recruited the older children to hang the remainder up on top, where the littles couldn’t reach. So, once again, our well-liked tree is up and twinkling merrily. There is no rhyme nor reason to the array, no correlating theme throughout, neither elegance nor excellence--and we want it just that way.
A friend of ours gave us a gigantic wreath with ribbons and trim and pine cones and such like. Teddy hung it outside, near our front door. Keith put little lights around it, and it’s really pretty. After that, he trotted next door and helped my brother-in-law put up his lights.
People are already giving us Christmas presents: one family brought us a turkey; Keith’s boss’s wife, one afternoon while Keith was at work, loaded his pickup with many bags of groceries.
Lawrence’s birthday is Friday; we got him a clock. It has a different bird painted on the face for each hour; and, on the hour, it tweets that particular bird call--a genuine recording. A sensor turns it off at night.
Saturday Keith spent the day cleaning up our yard--raking, taking out dried flowers, trimming shrubbery, and pruning the trees near the alley. Reckon our persnickety neighbor will like us better now? (Actually, she’s nice enough; it’s just that people who can’t abide the smallest leaf on their lawn shouldn’t live next to us.) One day this fall I spotted my sister out pulling weeds from her flower bed.
I marched right over there and informed her, “My CountRy magazine says that a good neighbor is one who doesn’t make his yard look better than yours.”
She laughed. And kept right on pulling weeds.
My mother decided Keith needed his Christmas present now; so she gave my brother some money and sent him off to get Keith an insulated pair of Redwing boots, a velour-lined sweat jacket with hood, a Carhart coat, and thick Redwing socks. Even though the temperature Saturday was below 20°, Keith stayed warm all day long.
Dorcas finished the blanket she was crocheting for my nephew’s new baby; enclosed is a picture of it. That blanket represents hours and hours of work. Now she is making ruffled collars for Hester and Lydia for Christmas.
Lawrence and Norma bought our van Friday. Saturday night they came to get it, and to sign some papers, and they brought us a pumpkin pie. MMMmmmm...
Yesterday I stayed home from church with Victoria (and Hannah and Joseph), who has caught that cold we are all getting.
When Caleb came marching in the door after church, he advised me, “We just had Sunday School; we didn’t get to open presents yet.”
When he arrived home from Christmas practice Friday night, he informed Larry, “We just had practice; we didn’t get to open presents yet.”
S’pose I need to lecture the little mercenary on the deeper significance of Christmas?
Our Wal-Mart store is now open for 24 hours a day--until Christmas, that is. This is just dandy--exactly what a late-night oil burner like me needs. Just the other night as I was sewing away, I had the deflating experience of running out of matching thread. And it had to match; the stitching was right on top.
“Aarrgghh!” says me. “Now, why didn’t I get more.....HEY! Wal-Mart’s open!”
So I dashed off and replenished several of my sewing supplies.
Saturday afternoon Nebraska played Texas A&M in the Astrodome at Houston. We won 54-15. Along about halfway through the game, the Nebraska fans started throwing oranges down onto the field every time the Huskers made another touchdown--because they’ll be going to the Orange Bowl, having won every game they played.
And now I’d better get back to my sewing machine.
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