Merry Christmas to you!

I guess I should also say, 'or whatever you do' too.  Happy Festivus!

We've had a busy few days.  Jolea came in Tuesday night and Jeff brought her directly to the house they didn't go out as planned, as they were both tired and Jeff had to work the next morning.

Wednesday Jolea and I did some shopping gag, I'd rather take a beating and it wasn't too bad.  Then we both got our hair cut.  I've had the same hairdresser since 1990!!! OMG!  Her son and Jolea were in 1st grade together.  So DeeDee was quite happy to see Jolea and Jolea's hairs were quite happy to see DeeDee.  Jolea hadn't had a professional hair cut since the last time DeeDee cut her hair, something like 3 years ago!

Like always Jolea has been doing a lot of cooking since she's been home.  Here she's making Mini Deep Dish Pizzas with Gracie's help.  These were really good, and even though I'd had surgery the tooth thing I was able to eat a couple and they were really good.  We came to the decision that they needed a few more ingredients than just mini pepperonis and cheese, next time we'll throw in some ground beef, bell peppers, green or black olives, onions, etc. as much as you can in a muffin tin.  Maybe it's time to purchase one of those muffin tins for extra large muffins. Hey.... I could make little chicken pot-pies in those too!

Friday we ventured out to deliver a Tiramisu and some not so spicy salsa to Lourdes and then we attempted to shop again, MISTAKE!  Jolea was trying to find an outfit to wear later.  She and Jeff were going out in Dallas.  She ended up raiding my closet, good thing for her that I don't dress like a Mom.  We spent more time in the parking lots than we did in the stores, Jolea shops like me, we scan, we spot something then we touch it, look at it, maybe try it on.  We're in and out in minutes.

Jeff came up for tenderloin and baked potatoes like father like son and he and Jolea headed back down to Dallas to meet up with an old friend of Jolea's from 7th grade and Jeff's buddies.
 

Then yesterday morning as Jeff was bringing her back up from Dallas, she remembers that she's supposed to meet a friend for breakfast.  Long story short, Jessica meets her at the house.  We whip up some pancakes and bacon and have a lovely chat with Jess and her adorable baby boy Braxton over breakfast. 

Seems like just a few weeks ago these girls were headed off to Padre for Spring Break.

He's a cute kid.

Here he's 'putting it out there for the girls' as Jolea and Jess said.

Gracie just LOVED his visit... it really freaked her out that we had a tiny person brought in to chase after her under the table.  I'm sure if she'd run through her tube he may have tried to follow her.

Around noon another old friend drops by and Jolea is whisked off for lunch with Woody's family Jolea and Woody worked together when she was home for the 2005 hurricane season.  She was later met and brought home by a different friend.  Chris and Jolea went to High School together.  Chris came in and stayed for a bit and they played guitars and sang together until the football game was over and he had to get back to his family.

We had dinner and soon after Amanda and her husband Matt came by.  Amanda and Jolea have also been friends since Junior High school when they were in 4-H together but attended different schools until high school.  We'd never met Matt, he's usually deployed overseas somewhere but is now stationed in Washington state.

We put all the leaves in Great,great,great Grandma's table, thinking that surely more of the kid's friends would wander in today around meal time.  Seems that the one that Jolea had invited I guess she felt sorry for him, she always tried to bring in strays may not come after all.  So we'll just scooch it back in to a setting of four.  Fine with me,  because there isn't much tiramisu or chocolate pie left.  I'm supposed to be making a chocolate cake right now but the ham is in the oven.

Tomorrow Jolea and I will set out for New Braunfels to visit Grandma and Grandpa.  Then it's off to Houston Tuesday to see Nita.  Jolea and Nita haven't seen each other since 2008 when Jolea was living in St. Thomas and we all went to see her there.  Then it's back home Wednesday morning, maybe catch Michael and Di as they are in Dallas for doctor appointments. and Jolea will fly out for Key West on Thursday.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a great week.

It's hard to believe...

... that 29 years ago yesterday we were decorating a Christmas tree.  A much smaller tree than what we put up yesterday, that one was a little wild cedar tree that had been growing in the back of the property at Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Shorty's house.  Dad had cut it down and strapped it to the top of the car.  Mom and Aunt Shorty had rummaged through a couple of centuries of odd-ball ornaments that were tossed in the backseat of the car for the trip back to Oklahoma City.   We spent the evening setting turning that little lopsided tree into a true Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

The next morning, after 3 weeks of waiting and resigning to the fact that I would live my life with a huge rotund belly and proving that even with that belly,  I could still hurdle the couch... I went into labor.

Long story, short labor 4hrs.20 mins a cubby cheeked little girl was born at 2:12 in the afternoon.  We named her Jolea Michael, after her 3 uncles three wise men, maybe in their own way. 

It's hard to believe that 29 years ago today, we received our best gift, and we didn't even have to wait for Christmas. 

Happy Birthday Jolea!

Just like 29 years ago, we we are awaiting her arrival, she's coming home tonight!

The Ghost of the Christmas just past.

I'm sitting here nursing a headache with a cup of coffee.  No, it's not one of those headaches, I wish.  It's combination of a lack of caffeine late in the day and eating greasy food in the wee hours of the night headache. 

I'm watching Jolea's friends on Spanish Fly.  Spanish Fly is a fishing show on ESPN.  She's friends with the Host of the show Jose Wejebe,  but also with his guest fishermen the Goins family.  The Fishtafarians, as the Goins are know by, are a family of artist.  Jolea met Jose and the fish family back when she was working as a dock master in Key West.  This episode is pretty interesting, too bad it won't be aired again so Jody can watch it. 

I don't post much about Jolea, because I figure you all read her blog if you're reading mine and I don't want to spoil the surprise if you come here first or subject you to a re-run if you come over here after stopping by there first.  If you don't read her, check it out.  She's our little Adventuress.

 We had a couple of the Pickers over last night.  Dawn and Mike came down too.  With a lack of band members and Jody refusing to play, Mark coaxed first me and then Dawn to learn to play the bass.  He kept saying "it's easy..."  Uhhh, not really.   It's a lot like patting your head, rubbing your stomach, chewing gum and walking backwards all at the same time.  It's not one of those things I can just naturally do, like knitting with my eyes glued to the TV or closed.  It requires me to get one hand going and then get the other hand going in a different direction and then try to stay on the beat with one hand and off the beat with the other and then listen to Mark giving me cues to what notes are coming up a whole beat ahead (how does he do that?) before he's even played the note.  The whole time I'm trying not to do what I've been told all my life to do and that's follow directions.  When you tell me A.... that means play A right then not D then A.  I've also been told, by my husband, that it's not good to multi-task.  "When you multi-task, you are not giving your full attention to any one thing."  OK... so  do I multi-task or follow directions or chew gum or pat my head?  Good grief, I may have to stick to chopping, otherwise know as mandolin for dead people.  That's Dawn by the way in the picture. I'm in her camera.  Dawn and Mike shouldn't have left at 1:30, because by 2:15 I had a big ole greasy breakfast cooked... bacon, eggs, biscuits and gravy.  I have cotton mouth so bad this morning I could drink a 6 pack of beer. 

It's that day we all dread.... the day we take the Christmas tree down and box up it and all the ornaments.  Hey... is this what the British (and Canadians) refer to as boxing day?  I never knew what that was all about but they seem to look forward to it more than Christmas Eve or Christmas.  I guess if you have a real tree that's dropping all it's needles and you have to keep all open flames extinguished you'd probably be excited for Boxing Day.

To all my readers from across the pond, or now down under, or across the desert, or through the woods (Duder), Happy Boxing Day. Oh wait, I think yesterday was Boxing Day... oh well today is Boxing Day at the Cruzans.

This year's Santa ornament. (jeez that picture is fuzzy)

This year's Snowman ornament.

Jolea had a boot for this year, I couldn't find anything Beachy... but I'll keep looking. And Jeff got a Santa on a cycle.

This is the one Maria (Overboard) sent us from Japan last year.

Here's the lovely tree in all it's dimunitive glory.  If Jolea isn't home next year, there will be no need to keep all those decorations and the big tree in the attic.  Jody will think he's free to throw them out.  I got this tree from the Library at school, gotta take it back this week.

Have a great week, hope it's a short one for you.

I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas

Was the person who wrote this song nuts? More likely 12 years old.  We had been warned by the TV weather guys that we could possibly see 'fluries.' The high yesterday morning was 54, that could have happened around midnight. Wednesday's high was in the 70's so it could have been dropping since the day before.

As I'd said previously, we'd had Thunderstorms all around us, with Tornadoes in East Texas, and I remember hearing it raining REALLY hard in the wee hours of Thursday morning. The wind was gusting pretty hard when I got up and around, but it really wasn't that cold when I went out to put a Christmas treat in the mailbox for the Mail Carrier.

Jody kept checking the weather, which is his full time job when he's at home, and he kept saying "it's getting colder by the hour."  He feels the cold more now than before the cancer treatment. I don't notice it because I'm cooking and cleaning as usual.

At one point of the day when the weather radar showed a huge mass of white to the west of Fort Worth, I decided to look out the patio doors.   Yea, finally I wouldn't have to hear Jody refer to the weather guys as "Lie-yaahs!"  Tiny little flecks of snow were falling as if someone was on the roof with a shaker of Confectioner's Sugar.  It was melting as soon as it touched a surface. The ground and everything was just too warm for it to stick. This is a good thing, we had plans to go out for the evening.  Just two blocks down to Mike and Dawn's house, but still, we just don't go out when the weather gets bad.

A couple of hours later it looked like this.  'Oh, the weather outside is frightful....'  We tried to reach Jeff to invite him to stay the night just encase it gets really bad later.  We'd hate for him to miss out on Turkey the next day. The first sign of any bad weather Jolea would put all her dirty clothes in her truck and zoom over to spend the weekend at our house.  In the end we often wondered why she had an apartment in Dallas, she still had a room at our house.  As it turned out Jeff was working and didn't get off until around 3.  He headed to Prosper to work on a motorcycle.

By the time we left to head down to Mike and Dawn's it was really coming down. It wasn't icy or slick yet, just sort of mushy.  The gusts of wind that were blowing took your breath away as well as made it difficult to carry gift goodies, hot rolls and Tiramisu into the Crain's house.  That dude with the sugar shaker was really going to town.  Earlier in the day Jody had said that the icons over the map of Texas showed rain in some areas, snow falling in North Texas and snow going from left to right over Lubbock in the Panhandle. He thought that was funny, we now know what they meant by this.  This snow wasn't falling, it was being shaken from side to side. 

We all stood around watching Dawn finish cooking. Trying as hard as we could to get in her way.  I'd say we were successful.

Dawn and I had to sample my attempt at infusing rum with vanilla.  I think it needs to sit a little more.  She disagreed and put some in her Vitamin Water. (She's a health nut.)

We had a lovely dinner of glazed ham (Tori glazed it), carrots, potatoes, green beans and (late) corn.  It was all very yummy.

We cleared the table, loaded the dish washer and set about making the Brownie Surprise that Dawn is bound to become famous for.  I'll make it and post the recipe later.  This stuff is going to be one of Jody's favorites.  Mine too, it's quick and easy and very similar to Lava Cake.

OH SNAP!  I had forgotten the ice cream!  You know what that meant.... Dawn and I would have to drive back down to the house while the Brownie Surprise (aka Chocolate Goo) baked.  So off we went.  This is the view through the windshield of the truck. 

While we were out we ran across a horrible accident.  Just a few doors down from our house...  there he was, face down in the cold.  Would Christmas be canceled for those folks out West of us?  It was still pretty early and he had miles to go yet.  How could parents explain that Santa hadn't made it because he was having a Ho Ho Ho Down in Texas?  Where's Tiger?  I swear I didn't give him any of that rum on the way to the Crain's (sorry the picture is dark, I have an amateur camera. Just click on the picture to get a better look.)

We made it back to the house before the Goo was done.  Just in time for Mike to get the dreaded call.  Dawn and I have something in common, other than the fact that we are both on the skinny side (she's a stick, I'm a post), both have bobbed brown hair, both wear glasses, both move at a high rate of speed, and both have a sort of dry wit.... we both have husbands that work at jobs where they are on call from time to time.  Yeah, Mike started it... he got a call from work and had to go in.   But he didn't have to drive too far, only into Plano, and it didn't take him long to take care of what ever problem had come up.  We played a couple of games of pool and he was back in a pretty short time.

But then Jody got a call, he tried to assess the damage over the phone, but the guys at the plant just couldn't make it happen.  He was going to have to go in. But not before he had Chocolate Goo with ice cream.  We loaded up and headed to the house.  It was a after nine when Jody struck out to drive the 40 miles to Sherman. He headed North knowing the roads would be a lot worse than the slushy mush we were having in town.  There are a lot of bridges between here and there and Texas doesn't have the snow plows or crews of sanding trucks available for out lying areas.  Most are working to keep those high rise bridges on the freeways de-iced.

I settled in, watched a little TV, got a few text messages from Dawn wondering if I'd heard from Jody yet, I didn't want to distract him from his driving and figured he'd let me know when he got there, so I went to bed.  He did let me know.... 12:10 he called to tell me he'd left a text (my phone was on the charger in the kitchen) at 12 .  He was there.  He said the traffic was bumper to bumper.  People literally dying on an icy road to get to Oklahoma and beyond  for Christmas. 

So here it is Christmas morning. A white Christmas. My very first.  I guess this can go on my bucket list.  Jody came rolling in around 5:30.  He's exhausted.  This means I'll postpone the Turkey until this evening and let him sleep through lunch.  Maybe I will take Dawn up on that ham and cheese omelet this morning.

I'll leave you with a picture of Luigi Crain and I.  We were dressed alike, I'm wearing my Schnauzer Sweater, it has a furry trim that looks just like Schnauzer fur.  Merry Christmas!