Happy Thursday and Happy New Year!!!!  How is your new year going so far???  I was off  from work yesterday for New Year’s Day and that was really nice.  My sister always cooks a big dinner for anyone who wants to come and eat.  I went over to eat with her and her husband and some of my nieces and nephews. We had lots of food and fun.  I baked bread last night and took two loaves of it to work, I try to get it out of the house so I won’t eat all of it.  My co-workers made pretty short work of it.

I am always a little sad on January 1st.  It is my mama’s birthday.  She passed away in 2003 so she has been gone for awhile but I always remember what fun we would have on her birthday.  We would gather the sisters and any nieces and nephews who wanted to go, and we would go out to dinner and see a movie.  She loved doing that.  She was such a special mama, the best in the world as far as I am concerned.  She was also my best friend and someone who always believed in me no matter what.

   This is my mama when she was about 16 years old.

I don’t know if it’s because it is a new year and a new decade, but I have never been so glad to see a new one. I will say that 2019 was good. but a lot of things happened that were not great!!!  The same with the entire decade.  I am still here plugging along and for that of course I am grateful.  But a lot of things happened not just in 2019 but during the last ten years as well. Mark had the kidney transplant in 2011 if you haven’t read that part of my blog you can catch up with it here and here.  I feel like donating a kidney to my husband was a miracle for me and for him.  To be able to do that for him was the best thing in the world to me.    But during the last few years I have lost three of my siblings, a brother in law and my father in law. I also lost my beloved Patches.  That is life I suppose but that’s a lot of loss.  My precious Scruffy and Kitty Kitty came into our lives.   I did do some amazing traveling in the last few years and that was fantastic.  Going to places I have never been before is so exciting to me.   That brings me to my word for the year.

Every year I try to pick a new word to focus on for the year. Last year my word was “Try”. I did try a lot of new things.  At times I pushed myself beyond my comfort level.  But this year my new word is “Discover”.  I want to discover a lot of things this year.  I’m going to try to keep a journal or list of things so that I can remember them all at the end of the year. Just thinking about discovering new things is very exciting and gets my heart racing.   I think the loss of several of my loved ones in the past ten years has made me more aware of life. This is our life to live.  Live it and make it the best you possibly can.  So this year I will see what there is to “Discover”.

Happy New Year and always remember,

Love your day your way!!!

Well as it always does Christmas came with a flurry of last minute shopping, baking, wrapping and snapping. Lol. I’m sure you know what I mean.  It seems like by the time Christmas is here I am a frazzled mess.  How does this happen?  I don’t mean for it to but it does.  Every. Single. Year.  I think I made ten trips to the grocery store this past week.  I wrapped presents and arranged get togethers and I loved all of that. And then it was over.  Just like that.  And I feel so free and liberated.  Who needs a present? nobody?  How many peanut butter balls do I need? zero.  How many gifts need to be wrapped? none.  Wow what will I do with all this free time.  I am sure I will find something.

We always have Christmas Eve at my sister Sandy’s house. This is for my side of the family.  For several years Mark has had to work and didn’t make it.  But he got off from work in time this year and was able to join us at my sister’s house.  We usually have about 25-30 people there.  Brothers, sisters, in-laws, nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews.  It is a lot of fun but also a lot of work. Everyone brings a covered dish and we do a dirty Santa drawing and we have so much fun.  All the littles still get presents from everyone so that is always fun to watch.

These are my nieces and nephews.  I think children is what Christmas is all about.  I enjoy spending time with them and watching them get so excited about opening presents.

So before going to my sister’s house on Christmas Eve I went in to work for a few hours.  I was walking into the village area where all of the gift shops are located and I stepped onto a wooden ramp that was slick with rain.  Just about the time I thought man this is slick. I fell flat on my back.  Luckily the village is not open so no one else was there.  I still had our maintenance department rope off the ramp just in case someone wandered over there.   The padding from my butt broke a good part of the fall. This is a time when the extra padding comes in handy.  I hit so hard it rattled my teeth.  I just laid there for a moment trying to determine whether anything was broken.  Once I was sure that I could move and bones were not sticking out I got up and limped off.  My back and hips hurt the rest of the day.  So needless to say I wasn’t in a very festive mood for our Christmas Eve get together.  I feel very fortunate that nothing was broken and I was able to walk away.

On Christmas Day I cooked dinner for my husband’s family, there is only three of them.  My sister in law brought her mother and my other sister in law came and then my sister and nephew arrived for dessert.   So we had about nine people and it was awesome!!!!  I love having people at my house even though it is a lot of work cooking and cleaning.  I always invite anyone who wants to come so I never know exactly how many people will show up.  I just make sure I cook a lot and I usually send the extra food home with people.

Scruffy loves my mother in law.  Actually he loves anyone sitting in this chair.  He will jump up and be snuggled by whomever happens to be in the chair.  He’s an equal opportunity lap dog.

The honey baked ham.  Yes it was delicious and we are still eating the leftovers.

Kitty Kitty can’t be bothered by all that is going on.  She still has to have her naps.

Santa was good to the babies.  As you can see Scruffy really loved that little blue Lamb Chop toy.

This is a life size Santa that Mark and I bought when we were first married.  We put him in our upstairs window so when you drive up you can see him looking out the window.  He is over twenty five years old, made of the hard plastic and we love him so.  I will admit I almost gave him away a few years ago because he was so big and took up so much room in the basement from Christmas to Christmas.  I am so glad I didn’t. Plus Mark would never have forgiven me. lol.

You know Christmas is not always easy.  It often looks like a lot of fun and festivities but many times people are missing loved ones and there is sometimes disappointments from expectations at Christmas time.  Christmas is sometimes a trying time especially as you get older.  Have extra consideration for your friends and loved ones during the holidays.  I hope you had a very Merry Christmas.

Always remember

Love your day your way

When I was a little girl I got a doll every year for Christmas and my Birthday until I was probably twelve years old.  I loved my dolls.  So when I was about seven or so I saw an ad in the back of one of my mama’s magazines for 100 dolls and I just had to have them.I guess Christmas time makes me think about what I always got for Christmas as a child and it made me think of my dolls and my 100 dolls I bought for $1.99.  Here is the story:

The ad read, 100 Little Dolls for only $1.99.  I was barely old enough to read when I first saw this ad.  It showed little dolls from all over the world wearing costumes from their native countries.  This was in the early 70’s and I was just a little kid and I didn’t think about anything but how I wanted those dolls.  I had to have the 100 dolls for $1.99.

Every time I would pick up a magazine I would quickly flip to the back and hold my breath until I saw the ” Doll Ad”. Whew, it was still there.  I begged and begged my mother to order me the dolls.  She said it could not be possible that you could order 100 dolls for only $1.99.  It was just too good to be true.  I begged and begged until she agreed that we would order them. She said well if anything came at all maybe it would be worth $1.99.

We addressed the envelope and put $2.00 inside.  We also taped two quarters for the postage onto a piece of cardboard and put it inside the envelope.  My mama looked a little skeptical that postage for 100 dolls could only be fifty cents but we did it.  It said to allow four to six weeks for delivery.

The minute we put the envelope in the mail I started dreaming of the dolls.  How I would dress them? where would I put them? What in the world would I name all of them? I had to make room for all of these dolls coming in the mail in a few weeks.

I ask my mama what would they be wearing? would they have different outfits for each country?  My mama and I speculated and wondered and dreamed.  Mama said I should just forget about them for awhile because they wouldn’t be here for several weeks.  Ha, no chance that I could forget about them for a second,  that just wasn’t going to happen.

After about four weeks I started waiting for the mailman every day. School was out for the summer so I could watch for the mailman who arrived every day at around 11:00 AM.  If our mailman had a large package that was too big to fit in our mailbox he would blow the horn and we would go out and get it. So I waited to hear him blow the horn to let us know he had a large package full of beautiful dolls.

One day as I was waiting at my post by the front door, the mailman pulled up and I saw him put a largish yellow envelope into the box.  It was not much bigger than a regular sized envelope.  Well that can’t be it I thought.

I went down to the mailbox and got the envelope.  It had my name on it. Surely there was no way this could be dolls. Maybe it was something explaining about when the dolls would arrive.   I ran to the house to show my mama.  We tore open the envelope and a bunch of tiny, hard, plastic dolls fell out. They were all pink.  They were barely an inch tall.  They were sort of like the hard plastic cowboy and Indian figures that my little brother played with.

    This is what they looked like.  Not a great picture but you get the idea.  

I looked at my mama in disbelief and she looked at me the same way.  I cannot tell you the disappointment I felt.  For weeks I had imagined my dolls and all the things I would do with them and how I would dress them.  It was devastating to this little girl.  How could someone put such false advertisement in a magazine?  My mama didn’t even say ” I tried to tell you”.

My mama and I counted the dolls and there wasn’t even 100. Not that I wanted 100 of those dreadful things anyway.  Many many of them were duplicates.  I was so angry I wanted to throw them away but mama carefully picked them up and put them in a little basket. She said that I might want to play with them one day.

As my mama and I put the dolls away we looked at each other and started laughing. My mama knew I was close to tears and she was trying to keep that from happening.  We laughed and laughed imagining this crazy story we would tell the rest of my family. Especially my two older teenage sisters who had made fun of me for ordering the dolls.  You see this was the great thing about my sweet mama she could find the humor in anything and make me feel better.

I never did play with those dolls and I have no idea what happened to them.  I recently searched the internet for an ad about them and actually found some of the dolls for sale!!!  That’s where the picture above came from.  Vintage they are now called. You can buy five or six of them for $6.95.  Wow how inflation has changed things.

A good lesson I suppose, and one that I will never forget.  Do I still love dolls?  Ahhhh no. I actually find them a little creepy.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed reading.

Always remember.

Love your day your way