Birthday lunch & Christmas tea.

Busy day today........ young Miss C came over for lunch, to belatedly celebrate my husband's birthday. She was busy at one of the cattle shows over the weekend, so she missed both his birthday and our Christmas party. But today was a short day for her at school, so she came here right afterwards for lunch and hot chocolate, then went to the NASA grounds to take care of her cattle.

C's birthday surprise for my husband was a handmade pillowcase. She's taking a sewing class at school, and she's quite good. Last year, she made him a pair of pajamas. This year's gift is a pillowcase-- bright blue fabric with red lobsters all over it. My husband loves fresh lobster, and C was so excited when she found that material in the fabric store that she ran over here with it to show me. So now he has a personalized pillowcase, and she said he can dream of lobsters while he's sleeping on it.

The birthday lunch started at 11:30, and we had turkey and cheese biscuits, hot chocolate, and slices of the carrot cake that we had for the Christmas party this past weekend. C had to be back on the NASA grounds before 1:00, so that worked out very well for us because we had invited two of our neighbors over for tea at 2:00.

This morning, I set up the table in the living room for our lunch with C, then set up the dining room table for the tea. C loved the gold-stars holiday plates and cups that I used for the lunch settings, and she peeked in at the tea table in the dining room which was set with the Lenox Christmas china. She really appreciates all the different patterns on plates and cups, and she seems to like the older ones the best.

Our neighbor S (at the corner) and J (two streets up) came over for tea and plum pudding. My husband bakes his traditional plum pudding only in December, and that was the star on that table. I set the table with Victorian "crackers," which we always have for Christmas. J and S loved snapping the crackers and finding the little gifts and paper crowns inside. We all sat there finishing our tea with gold paper crowns on our heads. Being that our local Marshall's store always sells packages of these crackers, we must not be the only ones in the area buying them and wearing paper crowns.

After our tea, we walked to the corner to S's house, to see her collection of Santas and her little table-top trees. We had no idea she was so "into" Christmas. S is our corner-neighbor who tosses out one strand of multi-colored lights onto her front lawn every December while the rest of the neighbors are stringing up miles and miles of white lights. The multi-colored lights were a private protest of S's, years ago when one neighbor who no longer lives here kept insisting that she use "white lights and only white lights." S says she tossed out the strand of multi-colored lights just to make the pesty neighbor nuts, and it became a tradition with her. She loves Christmas-- and the inside of her house shows it even though the outside of her house says "Bah humbug!"

S is also the same neighbor who never much bothered with any of the other neighbors on the street. When she worked, she was a principal at a local school and never really had time to socialize much. Now she's retired, and she has also been "mom" to her son's dog for the past few years. Well, when you have a dog, it has to be walked, which means you get out to see your neighbors. While walking her son's dog (who is now more her dog than his since he lives in California) she met all of her neighbors and has been coming to our Charades parties for over a year.

Contrary to what we thought, S is a very friendly lady with a wonderful sense of humor. Every time she comes here, she brings us home-baked cookies or cakes, along with a bag of dog biscuits for Gracie. In her home, she had more than half a dozen small Christmas trees, each decorated with a theme-- Santas, snowmen, angels, dogs. Her son is a director of cinematography for Hollywood movies, and her family room is filled with posters from the movies he's made. For each of those movies, she has put together a small Christmas tree filled with ornaments representing each particular movie.

Amazing how having a dog can change your life, and change everyone's perception of you. Also amazing is how not having a dog any longer can change you--- as in our friend J's case. She's our neighbor who had to put her little Yorkie to sleep a couple of weeks ago, which resulted in her going to the hospital for a couple of days. J misses her dog terribly, needless to say, but she hasn't talked about getting another one yet. I'm sure it's too soon for her to be thinking about that. The sparkle in J's eyes is gone, and I think it's more from losing her beloved dog than from being in the hospital for a few days.

I recently received a card from neighbors who used to live on the other side of our street. They left here a few years ago and moved up near Austin. Their dog Fred passed away last year, at the ripe old doggie-age of 18...... amazing! Now that's a testament to the love and care that Fred was given for all those years. I think that's the oldest age I've heard of for a dog. When I mentioned that to my husband, he said he hopes we're just as lucky with Gracie.

The neighbors with Fred, H and M, also loved Christmas. H got together with my husband one year and suggested that everyone on our street have lighted white reindeer in their front yards. Then, also with white lights, everyone could string together all the deer, breaking the strings of lights when you got to the driveways. My husband thought that was such a great idea, and we set out looking for those large white metal reindeer strung with white lights. I found a couple for us at a yard sale, then found more yard sale deer and "sold" them to the neighbors for the price I paid for them at the yard sales.

Before all of the neighbors could get the reindeer, H and M decided to sell their house here and move up to Austin to be closer to their son and his family. When December comes around, we all think of H and M, and tell the story of the reindeer that could have been all strung together in a circle around our cul de sac. Some of the neighbors have reindeer, most have white lights. If H and M hadn't moved, I'm sure H and my husband would have seen to it that every house had at least one reindeer in front of their house.

I still have the gold glitter holiday bells from H's yard sale-- I helped with their yard sale before they moved, and H let me have a look-see at what she was selling before the sale actually began. As soon as I saw those 1950s gold bells, I knew I had to get them...... they've been hanging on our front porch every Christmas since, and they're the first things I put out when I start decorating for the holidays.

Eight more days till Christmas. Jingle bells....... jingle gold-glitter-bells!