New Year's Day

Welcome to 2017. The years are speeding by and the calendar really needs to slow down some.

We had a nice Christmas... quiet on Christmas Eve, and a bit of company on Christmas Day. The weather was warm and sunny, which is always a good thing. When my cousins tell me that Christmas should be cold and snowy, I remind them that the Baby Jesus was born in the desert, not at the North Pole. That usually gets them to re-thinking their weather preference for Christmas.

We had a very quiet New Year's Eve... no fireworks in the immediate area last night, so my guess is that the dippity-do neighbor across the road was out of town and maybe she took her son with her. I was expecting a barrage of fireworks and noise from her property over there, but I was pleasantly surprised with the quiet. Ever since Savannah's "lost" days after that neighbor's late-April fireworks display last year, I've changed my mind about the beauty of colorful fireworks exploding in the country sky. There probably isn't a dog on this planet who can safely deal with the noise of fireworks, and Savannah surely isn't one of them. Our own dog's sanity and safety is my top priority, and if I never speak to that neighbor again, it will be too soon for me.

My husband and I spent this morning taking down the big tree in the dining room. I had taken off the ornaments a couple of days ago, but he had to take off the vintage bubble-lights before the poor tree could be taken out into the field. And that's where it is now, along with our other trees from previous Christmases... all of which make nice homes for birds and small animals that make their homes in our pastures.

As a result of the tree-moving, I've just vacuumed up sixteen million needles from that big tree, and no doubt I'll be finding a few others along the way. I would give anything to have a fake tree instead of a real (dead) tree standing up in our dining room. They make such beautiful artificial trees now... but my husband insists that his vintage lights have no place on a fake tree. I'm waiting for the day when my husband tells me that he's just too old to be messing around with the weight of a real tree.

The house has been de-Christmased..... I've been packing up the decorations since December 26th, and everything is neatly arranged in the walk-in storage closet. I pack up that closet like a puzzle, with all the holiday things nestled in there and out of the way.

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, but we don't do our big Valentine party like we did years ago. Every year, I go through the Valentine decorations and send some to the kids of my cousins, or I take some things to my booth at the antique shop and sell them. I've been doing the same thing with Easter decorations. About the only holidays that have survived in this house are Halloween and Christmas. And that's fine.... two big parties a year seem to be enough.

I've already started shopping for next Christmas... gifts for the cousins, and gifts for our grab-bag game for the Christmas party. Don't laugh... the calendar is always moving, and next Christmas will be here in a heart-beat.