Packing Paper

This year I did nearly all of my shopping online. I generally tried to buy it locally if at all possible, and then hit the net for the remainder of the gifts. Living in Marion does not provide the greatest in shopping selections, and so I enjoyed sitting in front of the computer browsing and browsing. With all of this online shopping, we have had a great deal of packages, and with packages comes packing paper. Trevor loves packing paper. I shot a video of him going to town with his big piece of paper!

Cookies and Trees

Phil worked for Helt's Pines for nearly fifteen years, and his relationship with Don and Sandy Helt was much like that of a grandson. He spent many cold December days selling trees with Don, eating lunch prepared by Sandy, and trying to stay warm. He worked in the summer planting trees in the field, and this is the fourth year we have enjoyed cutting a tree that Phil planted-I feel very green about this-you know, only taking what we put there. We set out Friday to cut a small tree, we weren't going to go for the biggest tree we could fit in our tiny house, as usual, we couldn't resist, and it is so tall my angel is twist-tied to the top, rather than resting on the point. We chose a narrow tree this year, and we hoped this would help to keep Trevor from getting into it-yeah, right!! Tyler and I baked the first batch of cookies, and he enjoyed decorating them-he is involved in the Community School of the Arts holiday program, and has a busy week ahead, so we thought we should get some baking out of the way!

Giving it another shot.

I am really going to try to keep up with this....I never kept a journal or a diary, and I will be honest, my children have sorry excuses for baby books. My mother is amazing at this, and she has always been great about journaling her life, our lives, and the happenings in the world. She kept diary after diary as a child and teen, she kept detailed notes of her pregnancies, she kept a journal of current events for my sister and I, our baby books were full of everything she could save, and she made me some of the most amazing scrapbooks ever-she has had pages featured in scrapbooking magazines. I, on the other hand, usually set out with good intentions, and I always fail. I have had diaries with one or two pages written in them, beautiful journals with nothing more than a snippet of my life, both baby books have everything saved up, and I never fill them out. My great-grandmother and great-grandfather wrote their memoirs for us all before they died, and we all have a copy. This is such treasured reading, and I really want to try to chronicle some of my life, for the next generation. So here it goes. One more shot.