Progress In December

     A light snow is falling outside all day, recoating the six lovely inches that fell late Saturday night.  We woke up Sunday morning to a changed scenery. THIS snow will stay.
     In our story hour book, we have gotten Ben Hur off the galley ship and adopted and enriched by one, Arrius. The old former servant, Simonedes, has appeared on the scene, apparently only to complicate life further for our hero.  The children are patiently enduring Wallace's pontifications on culture, history and religion as we go along because the story line is too interesting, faithfully resurfacing at regular intervals. I am pleased to discover that their dad has instilled enough ancient history to round out the story for us.
   And we've decided who has whose names around here for Christmas. The train and house setup on the big windowsill runs and lights for Brad. Elv really likes it, too. The mini-barn has been converted to a workshop for the guys who are creating gifts this year.
   And now it is time to bake cookies. I hope to shop for baking supplies on Thursday so that we may begin.
   While we make some steps forward, we slip back in one other important step.  The family collage card with which I was so pleased, came back from printing quite blurry. It seems that Picasa 3 carefully downsizes the picture at some point in the collage creating, but you can't discern that until you get it printed. Thankfully, I ordered only 10 of them because I wanted to see them before ordering 50 of them. Wasn't that wise of me?
   Our dear niece/cousin Adnrea has sent out her lovely invitation to the family. We are all cordially invited to attend "festivities" in her parent's southern estate in South Carolina over Christmas weekend. The personally crafted card is so beautiful that I have added it to the centerpiece tea tray on the dining room table.  Wouldn't she be shocked if we all took her up on it and showed? Wouldn't it be fun? I even hesitate to send kind regrets at this point. One can dream, right?