Christmas 2013 and News Years 2014

Today is New Years day and the holidays are over but we had a nice and quiet holiday period. We long ago gave up the commercialized aspects of Christmas and instead we use the time to get together with family and friends, we cook good foods, and we have some family traditions that are meaningful to us and we have continued them even though the kids are all long since grown and moved away.

My Christmas sweetie Holly in the Christmas headband I got her several years ago and the light up Christmas necklace our neighbor Roger's mother got her.

Each year we make Christmas decorations and ornaments and make and decorate Christmas cookies. This year we had Holly, Judy and I along with our neighbor Roger, Chris who was home from truck driving, and his friend Nick who is moving out here and getting an apartment with Chris. We had made and decorated the cookies a week or so before this and Holly had done up boxes of cookies for several local bachelors and delivered them. It doesn't take a lot of effort to make someone feel special and thought of and we always remember that the holidays can be a lonely time for many.

It may seem corny but everyone seems to enjoy it and when we hadn't mentioned the ornament decorating this year because we got a little behind our neighbor Roger came right out and asked "aren't we going to make ornaments this year?" but of course Holly and Judy already had everything ready to go.

Nick lost his mother recently and has had a rough go of it lately but he liked being part of the family activities and really its the little things that matter. I sometimes have to be reminded what the real meaning of Christmas is and slow down. I have always been a type A+ personality and goal oriented to the point where I overlook the simple things ...

None of us are artists but everyone gives it a go and its fun to look at some of the decorations from years past and remember those times.

Judy is the creative one in the family and usually has the ideas for what to make because she also does this for the kids at church.

Roger made these ornaments for his mother...your never too old to make mom happy with a hand made ornament.

Holly is actually fairly artistic and made these for our tree. I can make a lot of functional things but I got kicked out of art class in 6th grade for being artistically talentless (can you imagine telling a kid that now days?) so my meager efforts are not going to grace this blog!

For our New Years Eve, Holly and I had a nice steak and shrimp dinner, we were alone (yay!), and we spent a very enjoyable evening with no TV just drinking tea and putting together this puzzle and playing a dice game called 10,000. We had a great evening, it was a simple reflection of our life together, and to us it was better than any party or shindig could ever be. Happy New Year to everyone.

 

And finally I had to throw this in here. I have class tomorrow night but we will have an early meal of braised trotters and I think its interesting to see what people eat regionally. In our freezer we have a nice fresh beef tongue, chicken livers, lamb, deer meat, rabbit, fish and these trotters among other more mainstream fare. We are also getting ready for a get together with the Fire department and we are all busy hunting rabbit, squirrel, (we already have deer meat) and some of us are going to go catch a mess of crappie and bass for the big feast. I may even get Holly to try some scrambled eggs and squirrel brains...just life in the Ozarks!