Boxing Day

I have forgotten just what "Boxing Day" really means, but in this house today, it meant boxing up everything that was Christmas. All the Santas and angels are put away in the holiday closet, as well as the every other holiday decoration. The big tree is down and out on the curb, all the table-top trees are put away, even all the smaller trees....... every little Christmas thing is in that holiday closet till next year.

ShadowBaby woke me up this morning at 6:00 and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I just figured I'd get up and start un-decorating. Our goal today was to just get the big tree in the living room taken down and out to the curb for trash pick-up. That tree had gotten so dry in the past couple of days... even hard to get the ornament hooks off of the branches without pinching my fingers. Once that was done, I just kept going... and going... and now it's 4:30 and the house looks like it did before the holidays. Kind of bare. Not a red ribbon in sight.

Oh well....... I will be decorating for Valentine's Day soon....... and I imagine we're having our usual Valentine's Charades party, so that will be the next busy-thing to get busy with. But not today. Now that I've sat down for a little bit here, I realize just how much I've done today. I even got all the outside lights taken down, and the two lighted deer that were in the front yard are now in the garage. I hadn't planned on doing that either, but it was a sunny day, and warm enough to take the lights down without wearing a jacket.

Miss C and her parents gave us a chimenea (I hope that's the correct spelling) for Christmas. They didn't know that my husband bought me the fire bowl for the lake cottage, and they knew I liked those large pottery chimeneas. Not a problem... first we thought we'd just take both up to the lake, but then I decided to leave the chimenea here on our backyard deck. So that's what we did. We put a large brick patio-stone underneath it, and I can see the chimenea from the kitchen and breakfast room windows. I've already started to put some broken branches and twigs in it, to discourage the cats from jumping into the front of it. (AngelBoy likes to hide in things and peek out.) We can enjoy the chimenea here and the fire bowl up at the lake.... I didn't see the sense in bringing both things up there.

Gorgeous day out today..... yesterday was cold and cloudy...... today would've been a prettier day for Christmas, but that's the way it goes.