the grass is always greener…

our christmas family, originally uploaded by hockamama.

after the presents were opened, we went to the china king buffet in greensboro, then to the movie theater, where this picture was taken. we saw night at the museum, which, despite starring ben stiller, was a really good movie. it’s not that I don’t like mr. stiller, but all of his characters seem to run together, so this character was a combination of white goodman, arturo mendes, and alex, for starters. he was good in this movie, and there were only a couple of times that I got tired of his little diatribes.

after the movie, it was surprisingly simple to get everyone to form a camera ready group. dixon snapped off about 6 shots. this one has the best lighting, and most people look better in this one than the others (most, not me, I look worst in this one), but since it’s the last one, you can see that daddy’s already getting tired of smiling.

after the movie, jess and dixon went to his mama’s house, mama’s family went home because mandi had to go into walmart at 10 on Christmas night to get all the Christmas clearance ready for the customers the next morning. rich and the boys and I went to the hospital to see our good friend Linda, who had a heart attack Christmas morning. she’s doing very well; they expect her to come home today.

jessica left this morning for her trip to italy. they are in raleigh right now, their flight to new jersey leaves there at 11:30, so they’ve got a couple of hours to hang out and catch some sleep, since she didn’t get any last night. I’ve had to say goodbye to her a couple of times before, and it’s always so difficult. I miss her like crazy. I hope she has a fantastic time, but I wish she were already home.

this afternoon, daddy and I are going to spend some time together. I’m really excited; we’re going to romano’s macaroni grill in greensboro. since we can’t go to italy with jessica, we’ll go eat an italian lunch. daddy loves italy; he’s been there several times, so he told jessica some of the best little corners to find if there’s any time allowed from their tour. if we could have afforded it, we would both have gone along as chaperones. but I think it’s just as well that we didn’t. she’ll have a great time.

tony has been busy busy playing chibi robo, his newest gamecube game. it’s cute, I’ve been playing it after he goes to bed. I’m really enjoying this time with him since he’s out of school. he’ll have to go back soon enough, though.

tony had us up at 6:00 this morning.  what a surprise!  I can remember as a kid wanting to get up before dawn, but as I got older and entered teenhood, mama had to wake me up.

everyone enjoyed their gifts (I think, hope) we enjoyed each other’s company, and then daddy snoozed in the chair while the children played with their treasures.  the kitties had a good time on their first Christmas, playing in the paper and plastic.

now we shower, dress and wait for the family to arrive.  more presents to be opened, then we head to greensboro for a nice meal of chinese cuisine and a matinee.  I think I look forward more to the afternoon of family fellowship nowadays than I do the morning’s festivities.

I hope that every one of y’all has a BLESSED, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

…and I’m busy, busy, busy being good. It’s the day before the night before Christmas, and I’m doing all the things a good kid should.

Every Christmas I sing this verse of an old old song. My kids think I’m crazy, as they’ve never heard it before. When I was a kid (decades ago), I used to have a 45 record with this song on it. I listened to it all year long; I loved it. When the kids gave me junk about it again this year, I googled it. I can’t find any evidence that this song ever existed. Maybe I really did make it up…

as an aside, I hope to finally get back to the business of blogging and reading blogs in the next few days. I will finally have time to sit here longer than the 3 minutes it has taken me to jot this down.

funny feet, originally uploaded by hockamama.

I still have no answer for this…but now I have proof

starshine at the window, originally uploaded by hockamama.

she jumps onto the screen to indicate her readiness to come in the house. it’s pretty exciting nerve racking when I’m standing at the sink (usually washing the dishes that I’d rather be putting into my dishwasher), and it’s dark outside…

baby Jesus is missing!, originally uploaded by hockamama.

I have around 15 of my nativities set up this year, which is about one third of the sets that I’ve collected over the years. I have all different kinds, glass, plastic, resin, cardboard, etc. My favorite is one that tony made me, using the corner of a box and some macaroni for the people. I didn’t set most of them up this year because of the kittens. I was afraid they would get up and lay on all the surfaces and counters where I normally put my nativities. and they do. this set in particular, seems to be their favorite. baby Jesus goes awol constantly. once in awhile, it’s Joseph who goes on walkabout, but usually, they pick on the baby. as soon as I find him and put him back in his spot, they grab him and take off again. I’m hopeful that next year they will have settled down enough that I won’t have to worry about Jesus.

waffle goes in for the pass of the baby Jesus, originally uploaded by hockamama.

when I went in search of the baby, I found waffle and cuppycake tossing him about the entryway like yesterday’s soccer ball. you can barely see ringo’s feet as he plays spectator.

thankfully, the plays are over! they both went off without a hitch, blessedly. ms judy, tony and madison’s sunday school teacher performed max lucado’s crippled lamb. she used all 5 of my youth group, as well. tony was joshua, the lamb, and ms judy was abigail the cow who took him under her wing. madison played mary and the youth were joseph and the shepherds. it was really cute, and as always, everyone enjoyed it.

our play went well, also.  the play we did this year involved a powerpoint presentation, with a picture to correlate with each aspect of the nativity story.  we had a couple of missed lines, which also resulted in skipped pictures, but it worked out fine.  after the play, I showed the audience the photos they missed, and they really enjoyed it.

I explained to the youth (as I do every year) that the audience doesn’t know what the cast will be saying, so they don’t know if lines were skimmed over; my hope is that they will just gloss right over any missed lines, but they almost always falter, and I guess that’s just human nature. it’s hard to keep reading aloud if you’ve lost your spot, even after you find it; so I guess this is along the same lines.

today was the Christmas program at the elementary.  it is always so sweet to listen to an auditorium (or multi-purpose room)  full of angelic voices.  it’s even more fun to watch the couple of kids up front making faces at audience members.

so, for the next couple of days I can finish up the crafts that I need to complete for gifts, including goody baskets.  I covered nut and coffee cans with Christmas scrapbook paper.  they turned out pretty nice.  I think I’ll need to bake some more cookies, someone discovered my stash hidden in the dishwasher, and now they’re terribly depleted.  you’d think these people never have homecooked goodies!

next, wrapping gifts.  right now everything is in bags in my closet, and I can’t move around in there.  hopefully I’ll have them wrapped and under the tree (keeping fingers crossed that they stay wrapped) in the next couple of days

by far, the best presents under our tree

front, originally uploaded by hockamama.

this is the front. I put different prints on all of them. they each have 3 message tags with ribbon, then a print tag with the year on it. they’re stuck on with foam dots. there are tiny brads in the corners.