When 42 people are making plans something has got to go wrong. It has nothing to do with communication. It has everything to do with what you hear. For instance. Let's say that I am a little loopy anyway and I'll take total blame for the ALMOST fiasco. We decided to stray a little off the traditional path and have spaghetti for Christmas dinner. We had just done the turkey blow out meal 3 weeks ago. So, we thought that spaghetti, garlic breads, salads of all kinds and lots of desserts would fill the tummies of all our family. Sometime during the day of Christmas Eve I heard my sweet sisters say that they would do all the shopping for dinner. And then I said, "I want to make my special sauce." To which I got a resounding yippeeeee. I didn't stop to think that they would not know what to buy for "MY" sauce. So about 9pm on the eve of this lunch I started to leave for home and we were planning times for lunch etc.....I mentioned getting my groceries they had shopped for and going home to make sauce. Blank stares met my always blank stare. They assumed rightly that since I was making special sauce I'd have to shop because how would they know? OOOOOPPPPPPPPPS. Now, we had spaghetti noodles and NO hope for sauce. The ONLY store opened in our town on this eve night would be 7-11. Runs were made there but no ingredients that I would need. Friends we could call to "borrow" sauce ingredients? At almost 10PM on this eve night? I think not. So, daughter # 1 and I started home wondering how we were going to pull off this late night cooking miracle with what I had in my pantry. As we neared home, I noticed that the convenience store was still opened by our house although they were turning off lights as we pulled in. I knew that they did not stock what I needed but I was desperate. They let us in and locked the door. I mentioned that I wondered if the attached restaurant ( that I eat in at least twice a week ) would loan me some spices and sell me some hamburger meat. They totally were ok with all that and asked what I was up to this late. I told the story of the noodles with no sauce and the guy and girl looked at each other and smiled. They had spent the previous day making stock pots full of homemade spaghetti sauce to freeze for themselves for months. Did I want it? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME? We did pay them for their time and supplies and walked out with a huge pot of delicious sauce. Had we been 5 minutes later? I shudder to think how we could have pulled off a dinner of slimy spaghetti noodles with salads on the side. Even Pepperidge Farm garlic bread couldn't have cured that.

Not in relationship to the meal but everyone in my house has had runny noses and coughs. We just seemed to all be wiping little and big noses all week. We have kept KLE*ENEX in business. We also learned the wonders and the miracle of nasal saline washes. Sounds gross but trust me......it's a wonderful thing!

My sweet daddy was hand delivering a Christmas card to dear family friends and was bit several times by a dog enroute to their door. No one is to blame. The dog was doing his job as family watchdog! However, several hours in the ER treating leg wounds took up a precious part of our day. Daddy doesn't have much "meat" on his legs so some of the bites looked pretty bad. But, it NEVER slowed him down. He always is on a mission of some kind to help out anyone and everyone who needs him.

This dry winter has brought lots of field mice out of their hiding holes. They are searching for water and they think they found it around my house. We have set traps outside for months now and let me just say. I DO NOT CHECK THE TRAPS. It is not in my job description. Puking children were in my job description years ago. Suffice it to say that they have now found their way into the garage. Amidst......garage stuff. Yeah, let's just call it garage stuff. Anyway........"Santa" left a sack out there to be brought in at bedtime after all the children were sound asleep. A few hours later we went to retrieve it and a hole the size of the Grand Canyon was in the side. The foot long beef jerky stick was nibbled up and down. The pack of Big League chewing gum was ransacked.


Here's the happy little fellow wondering where the rest of the beef jerky is, looking for his nerf ball and wanting another chew of BIG LEAGUE bubble gum.

OH WELL......lots of lost receipts, mixed up presents, gifts that were duplicated, mislabeled gifts, and lots of memories. And lots of love, let me tell you. Lots of love. No, our last name is not Griswold. But, close.