No more dreaming, it's definitely been a white Christmas!!!!

We're Minnesotans and we're tough, but snowstorms at Christmas are a bit hard to take.

We missed celebrating with my family and now my husband's family. This is getting old real fast! All that good food, great fellowship and just, well, being together.

But Mother Nature had to have her say. While we didn't get as much snow here, the travel and winds and snows were worse around us.

So on Christmas Day, when normally we'd be visiting with my side of the family, we instead stayed bundled up at home. The boys were enjoying their new netbooks, Doug had plans to watch something with a ball in it on TV and me...well, I had an inkling to go to a movie.

I don't mind going to a movie by myself. All those years I did the power-commute thing for work taught me that sometimes you just have to do things by yourself. And I do enjoy movies. Doug doesn't like sitting in theatre seats and the boys have now decided it's not the coolest thing on this earth to go to a movie with mom...she can drive you out there but then you try to separate.

I don't mind. I can pick where I want to sit and what movie I want to watch and laugh as loud as I want or wipe away the tears in private without worrying if someone is going to see me.

So I saw It's Complicated. Good movie although I was surprised to see so many men attending what I thought was a chick flick. There were husbands and wives at the movie and, in one row, three guys...just guys no dates, no wives...interesting.

Christmas was a bit unconventional. How many times have I gone to a movie on Christmas day? Never until this year. And I saw that there were many people I knew who felt the same way. My best bud and her family were there. They went to another movie but there was something comforting knowing their plans had changed as well. And once I got out of the theatre, some church friends were waiting to see the same movie I saw.

When it snows at Christmas like it did this year, you have to expect the unexpected and go with Plan B!

Christmas Eve shoppers UNITE!!!!

Most people would be in a panic by now....six days till Christmas. But this is the time frame that gets my adrenaline flowing.

I am a regular Christmas Eve shopper, you see. I have a few things purchased...a few things for the DILS (daughter-in-laws), know what we are giving all our boys and have my present purchased to me..actually it's my present from my hubby but Doug told me to get my own present since I told him I wanted some Hillcrest gear. He said, "Buy it from me and wrap it for Christmas."

It works. At least I can get it in the size I know will fit and not some imaginary size Doug either wishes I'd be or some oversized thing he thinks will fit me but I will swim in...so I'm not complaining.

And about my Christmas Eve shopping, well, it's in my blood.

You see, growing up, my sisters and I would plan our Christmas Eve trips to either Alexandria or Fergus Falls. We had a list of who we had to buy for and some ideas. You see when you shop like this you have to have ideas. You can't have one thought in mind like those little hamster things that EVERYONE seems to be buying, except me, obviously.  And you go for things people can use rather than the popular faddish things.

I remember going into the department stores and we'd try several types of perfume for a gift for mom or check out the different tester bottles for cologne for our brother or dad or uncles. One year we all got sick to our stomachs on the way home, no urping, but it still made our stomachs churn as we smelt like a combination of Stetson cologne and Chanel perfume. YUCKO!

It was the only time in the winter that we drove with the windows down!

Once we got home to the farm, we each went into a different bedroom to wrap, wrap wrap, finish chores, take a bath (we had no shower. Oh, the humanity!) and get ready to go to Grandma's house. Amazingly, all the hub-bub seemed like a well-planned event. We enjoyed the evening, the surprises of the gifts and all the food. There was always more than enough to eat.

Ahhh. Busy shopping, preparations and a late night. We slept really good once we got home.

So maybe my Christmas Eve shopping events aren't really something I HAVE to do but it's like baking sugar cookies and listening to Christmas songs...it's tradition! And you don't want to mess with mother tradition now, do you?!

Oh Christmas Tree humbug

Like many households, we got our Christmas tree up after Thanksgiving.

It's artificial, but like real trees, it has its imperfections. The top branches seem thicker than the bottom ones and the top branch, the one that's supposed to stick straight up, has a bend in it. I could bend it straight, but it gives some realness to its unreality.

Regardless, like the Christmas decorations of my youth, this tree will be up until the 12 days of Christmas or, in other words, through Epiphany. We're so quick to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus in the weeks coming up to Christmas, we fail to honor the whole Christmas story including the wisemen!

And so the decorations are up for the duration.

My nativity scene has been scaled back some, though. Not because of any cost cutting measures. The reality is that some of the figures have fallen on hard times...they've fallen on the hard floor and have broken.

Some of their falls were due to grandbabies who got ahold of the figurines before Gramma could grab them. Some fell victim to my clumsiness. No matter what, they're toast, plain and simple.

So it's a bit smaller party in the stable scene. There's a donkey, cow and sheep. there's a wiseman (note the singular term) a shepherd and Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. The important thing is the three main characters remain.

My girlfriend told me her family had received a nativity set carved from olive wood. They lost baby Jesus and replaced him with a swaddled napkin complete with pen-placed eyes, nose and smile.

I got my Family Christian bookstore catelog today and there were other nativity scenes to purchase. There's even a Veggie Tales one!

No matter what the characters look like, it's the story that counts. The fulfillment of prophecy. Our Savior is born! Alleluia!

Blessings

Here they are! Our DIL Nancy and her sons (our precious grandsons) B and Kian. although we don't "celebrate" halloween, we do enjoy the costumes. The boys ar wearing costumes Nancy made. Obviously they are color crayons and Nancy is so gifted and did such a great job of putting the outfits together. And her? Why she's a gumball machine! So creative.

We weren't able to be home that night because Andy had a football game - semi-sections. They lost but they had a good season and we were blessed with everything along the way. The next night, the same night as the Vikings game, JP and Julie came with Aaleigha...she was dressed as a Vikings Cheerleader. Doug tried calling Andy who was watching the Vikings game at a friends house to tell him we had an actual Vikings cheerleader in our living room but he was too busy watching the game, obviously!

what fun it was, though! To see the kids and grab these pix.

We are blessed!

And the routine continues...

School has started, thankfully!

Now we are back in a routine...or at least I THOUGHT we were back in a routine. We're still getting classes finalized, a homework schedule going and, last week, Jose decided to go out for soccer. Of course he's now missed the hard work they all went through during sports week in mid August. But Jose saw something that he thought he could provide for the team.

In his Facebook status, he said he was going out for soccer and then added the note, "they need me."

Andy is playing football. His foray into football answers the constant comments he's received from friends, "Cmon out. Join us for football." Of course, that's my mom thought of what they're saying. I'm sure it was a totally different conversation and Andy is going out more to quiet the peer pressure he's been feeling. He loves football, don't get me wrong. He just doesn't like to play it as a team high school sport. He'd rather have a basketball in his hands!

But he's enjoying his junior year. He has a fairly light schedule and is also jr. class president, something we learned from other people and not from him. Guess he didn't think it was really that big of a deal.

Doug's back to driving school bus plus he's picking up a few coach trips now and then. Once the school year starts, they start driving college in high school teams to sporting events.

And I now have the days to myself in my home office as everyone goes about their own routines!

We schedule time with JP and Julie and Wayne and Nancy and the grandkids! How special those times are...

So it remains busy.

Breiden, at 2, is quite the talker. Kian, at 1, has learned what buttons to push. They were over the other night and, as Breiden was standing by the little TV I set up for them, as he was watching or attempting to watch Thomas the Train, Kian kept shoving at his shoulder. It was such a brotherly nit picky thing. Doug and I watched, smiling, remember similar times we had with our siblings. They resolved the situation themselves. Turns out Kian wanted to check out toys and was, in his own way, trying to get B to move. Although we've seen him get that kind of brotherly satisfaction out of bugging his older brother!

And so, that's our life right now.

And how are things with yours?

a fair time

Yesterday was a work day - at the state fair.

My bro and sis came with to enjoy a day at the fair. We didn't get to do much together at the fair. They went their way and I mine. I ran to three or four ag-related booths that I'd contacted before the fair's start. It was a busy schedule including picture taking and interviews.

Doug is complaining right now that I didn't bring him a foot long hot dog.

Get over it, I say.

I told him I didn't have time. The three of us — bro, sis and me — met for lunch at Hansen's stand. They had a pork chop sandwich and me? a hamburger. It was good but I really had no time to stop for the traditional fair food such as corn dog or foot long dog.

Doug doesn't believe me. Everyone should have room for that, he thinks. Well, think again.

So today I'm trying to recuperate.

I'm sure I did over 10,000 steps yesterday! Heaven knows my leg muscles sure feel like it today!

I'm ready to let the chips fall where they may - the buffalo chips, that is.

Tomorrow I go to Farmfest and am on the media team for the DNR's Buffalo Chip Throwing Contest.

Last year, my first year in the contest, I threw like a girl, as my guys would say. My distance throw lacked distance. If it made it three feet, I was lucky.

They kept telling me to throw it like a frisbee. A frisbee? A buffalo chip and a frisbee have little in common. The frisbee is this aerodynamic disc. It glides. A buffalo chip is a, well, a dried mound of buffalo poo! There's nothing aerodynamic about that! Afterall, if God had intended us to throw the "chip", he'd have done a better job on the design aspect.

I carried my team on accuracy, though. I threw it in the bucket.

So today is reserved for practice. With a frisbee. No buffalo poo in my yard!

My mom said that, while growing up in North Dakota in the early 1920s, they'd collect the cow pies and use them in place of wood to burn in their stove. YUCK! Imagine that odor! And if you wanted to live the smells of yesteryear, does Febreeze even carry that scent? Hmmmmm. And what would be the chance of future sales if you were to bottle the stuff?

So tomorrow I will don my little plastic gloves and throw the bull... At least we won't have to burn it!