Christmas at Our Home: The Unabridged Edition

...And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

Ah, who doesn't recognize even a piece of the classic poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas"?

Oh yeah, that's exactly how our home is at Christmas. All is quiet and peaceful, not even a mouse moving about. Everything is beautiful, neat and sparkling. Grinnin Grampa is wearing his cap, sound asleep, breathing ever-so-quietly.

"Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse"...NEVER would he snore on Christmas Eve!

But the pictures you see are the sheer truth of it all, at least around here. This is what our bedroom floor has looked like for a couple - okay, a few nights now. The middle picture is what our bed looked like this afternoon, as I was frantically trying to wrap a couple things before a certain someone got home.

Wrapped gifts under the tree in the living room.

However, the next few pictures are what I prefer to leave you with; these are bits and pieces of what the inside of our home looks like if you throw a magical sheet that makes the mess around the bits and pieces disappear.

The lime green tree in my office with pink and white decorations.

A musical snow globe I've had for years. If you look closely, you'll

notice that the shepherd boy is missing the bottom part of his arm.

It's floating around at the bottom, close to Baby Jesus' bed of hay.

I'll never know how something can get broken inside a snow globe, all

cushioned in glycerin. There's no damage to the outside. This, by the way,

is how I bought it and why it was probably something like 75% off at the time.

Porcelain ornament that is one of my favorites; another that I've had for years.

Our neighbors get baked goodies from us every year. This is

what their gifts consisted of this year. You saw the wrapping mess.

No way am I sharing my kitchen mess.

It snowed a few days ago and I managed to capture this

cardinal sitting a few feet from our back door. It was/is

the only semblance of peace and order around our home

for several weeks.

As Lily Tomlin's character on Laugh-in would say, "And that's the truth...!" (insert raspberry sound!)