Merry Christmas! or Christmas Break - Part 2

Well, since my last post; Christmas has come and gone. Along with other things that happened during the past few days. No one went anywhere for our break....well, Rick came home and Dad has now left but as the old saying goes "the best laid plans of mice & men (and women)" just didn't materialize. So we went to Plan B, which was not what we wanted but what we got. We sent Mo & Matt's Christmas off via Global Express Mail on Monday. The day before Rick came home; our water pump went out. NO water. You don't think about it until it doesn't work, and it took Dad & Rick about 3 days of hard work to get the well and pump fixed. They ended up hooking up to the 2nd well that we use to water the yard and replaced the pump and tank. Thankfully that was fixed before the weekend began, but it did put a crimp in the plans to have all laundry and housework done before the weekend. The highlight of the week other than having water again and Rick home, was the e-mail from Mo saying "The box arrived!" I confess to shedding a few tears of motherly joy over that one, knowing my family had their Christmas from us before THE day. Thank you, USPS Global Express Mail!

With last minute trips to the stores, we got everything ready and began our cooking on Christmas Eve, the men cut up the veggies for our dressing (stuffing to some of y'all) and we were baking pies. During all this we set up the web cam here and Mo set up hers, we talked with her while she & Matt were cooking and setting up on Christmas Day, and we were doing our thing late night Christmas Eve. The next morning with cams in place again, we 'exchanged' gifts and were able to share in that even though 1000's of miles apart. Ok, it's not the same as being in the same room, but we're thankful that we had what we shared. Anyone who says "oh I wish I could live --- years ago" has never had anyone in their family live 1/2 way around the world for any length of time. So to the true inventors of the Internet...Thank you, Thank you and again Thank you!

After Christmas it's basically been relax and be lazy. We've slept in but still have gotten some things accomplished. Like organizing our closet and shelves and getting rid of stuff that we just didn't have time to go through and discard until now. I wanted it done because I've watched a few of those TV home organizational shows like Clean Sweep and I just don't want to ever reach that point in my home. Just watching a show or two of that and you're ready to stop being a pack rat and start tossing junk. I'm even narrowing down my keepsakes to a couple maybe 3 plastic shoe boxes.....not an easy task for a pack rat, trust me!

Well, I have a few more days left before it's back to work, so I'm going to go and enjoy spending time with family & friends. To all of you out there, I hope you had a very Merry Christmas and are looking forward to a Wonderful New Year!