Here is my Valentine’s card to each of you!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Sallie

P.S. If asked for a retrieval number, use 6f9168-Slm

I know, I know. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. So why am I writing about Christmas?

Well, because I’ve had a Christmas topic on my mind and put off writing about it for a bit until we were past the Christmas burnout stage.

So, for discussion…

One of my favorite non-religious parts of Christmas is receiving Christmas cards, letters and photos. Especially the photos and letters. I eagerly look forward to the letters from friends who live far away and I no longer see in person. I always enjoy the photos as well. However, here is my beef with the Christmas photos…

Why do people just send pictures of their children? While I enjoy pictures of cute kids as much as anybody, what I would really like to see is a picture of the parents as well. In many cases, it is the parents I have the relationship with and I’ve never even met their children. Now to be fair, this year we only sent out pictures of Caroline so I am just as guilty as the next person. But I think from now on it will be family pictures for us.

Any thoughts?

I guess all the TV cooking celebs always say you should use unsalted butter when you bake. My mom and I have always used salted, but this Christmas we made a couple of favorites with unsalted. We did not like them nearly as well. The cookies tasted really flat compared to what we are used to. I don’t think I would do that again.

So that made me curious… Do you use salted or unsalted butter when you bake?

How about you? Please take a moment to vote in the sidebar and leave a comment here if you would like!

I hope each of you has a blessed Christmas this week. May you have safe travels, food that turns out well, and surprises under the tree.

Most importantly, I hope you discover a renewed sense of awe and wonder in the birth of the Christ. To fathom the incredible overwhelming message of Christmas and yet the profound simplicity of it as well… May the Holy Spirit open each of our eyes afresh to the glory of Jesus Christ, the Savior and Lord of all creation.

Merry Christmas!

Yes, we are still in full holiday mode around our home. We are also busy, busy, busy with work and clients. If you’ve been reading here for a while you know that this is a VERY WELCOME change. We’re just so glad to be busy with the business because things were pretty slow for months and months, even though it makes for a more complicated Christmas season.

Anyway, last week I hosted our women’s Bible study Christmas gathering at my house. We had a lovely time of great food and fellowship. One of our co-leaders had us share our worst Christmas and our best Christmas. It was interesting that every woman except one had at least one bad Christmas and several of the women indicated that they had more than one to choose from. When it was my turn I shared that my worst one as a child was when I was in third grade and got the chicken pox. I missed the entire week of school before Christmas vacation – all the parties, Christmas program, crafts, etc. Bummer. As an adult, David and I have had many bad Christmases and I left it at that.

I thought I would share this topic tonight because I’m sure in the midst of all the preparations and joy and celebrations there are more than a few people who read here who are not going to have a very merry Christmas. If you are like me in previous years, you may be dreading the whole thing. We had a few years where my stomach was literally in knots thinking about the holidays – starting in September and continuing right through when it was over. There were problems leading up to the holidays, problems that came out of the blue on the holiday itself, anger, tears, hard words, etc. Not between David and me, but in dealing with others. I would not wish these kinds of situations on anyone.

Personally I find great comfort in knowing others have suffered before me, come through it ok, and can find joy on the other side. No matter how much a holiday stinks and fails to live up to any of the peace on earth, goodwill towards men it is supposed to entail, Jesus is still Lord and the Christmas story is still an inspiring and universe changing event.

I’ll close with one of my best… This year. There have been other good ones in the past, but there is something so great about watching Christmas through the eyes of your child. Caroline is especially taken with the donkey in the nativity scene we have. But Caroline LOVES the lights. Every morning when we come downstairs she points out every Christmas tree, swag and string of lights that needs to be turned on. We turn them off during her nap and as soon as she comes down again, she is right on the need to turn on the lights. We took her for a drive to see the lights a few nights ago and she kept sighing and aahing and such. It was priceless. I’m so looking forward to her opening her gifts and can’t wait to see her reaction to some of the things we bought her.

So does anyone want to share a worst or best story to encourage anyone else?

Edited to add: Major bonus points if your worst story makes us LOL!

I’ve just about finished up my Christmas cards and will be sending them out today. We found some really cute ones at Target this year that were only $2.49 for 18! Woo hoo! I really liked the message and artwork so it was a major bonus find. Caroline wrote the Christmas letter this year. She did a very nice job, if I do say so myself. We also send out Christmas cards to our business clients and those are going out today. Overall I think we send out around 80 cards. I’m not sure if that is a lot or not, comparatively speaking.

So how many Christmas cards do you send out? Do you make your own? Buy them? Have any special rules for who gets a card and who doesn’t?

Please take a moment and vote and leave a comment if you are so inclined!

I’ve decided that I’m going to change my comment verbage to “25 gracious friends and 1 hit and miss hostess have shared their thoughts.”

Is it really possible that Christmas is two weeks from tomorrow?

I’ve been reading all the great comments coming through the past several days and every time I think I’m going to sit down and respond or write a post, something else comes up and I don’t get to it. So here is the run down of all the post topics I’ve wanted to write about or mention in the past couple of weeks and didn’t have time to do so.

For those who said they miss Sallie’ Stack… I do too. I haven’t give up on it and anticipate I will be back at it sometime soon. I’ve done very little surfing lately and that carries over to the Stack.

Yesterday David and Caroline and I did the Advent reading and lit the candles at church. We were blessed to be asked to participate.

I finally had to get rid of my navy Bass penny loafers. I don’t even remember when I bought them. I had them when we moved in this house six years ago and they were already old at that point. Actually I would still be wearing them but they hurt my feet now. My feet changed with the pregnancy and some shoes I just cannot wear any longer. I was in deep mourning when I finally acknowledged that I have to stop wearing them because I can’t find anything like them anywhere else. Stupid, I know, but I love those shoes!

Yesterday I wore one of my very favorite outfits to church. This is a big deal because last winter I could not wear it at all. It was snug, but it looked fine. Slowly I’m getting back to where I was when I got pregnant. (And the operative word there is SLOWLY…)

This week I’m hosting my Bible study for our Christmas party. I enjoying having people over so I’m looking forward to this. None of the ladies at our new/old church have been to our home before so this will be a nice way to have them all over at once.

And in the interest of full disclosure…

I haven’t ironed my sheets the past four weeks when I’ve washed them.

We now have our TV in the living room, hooked up to the DVD player but no reception.

I think we are going to baptize Caroline.

So there you have it! Everything I haven’t had time to write about in recent days. I’ll be putting up a new poll soon so check back for that! And I’m going to try to respond to some of the comments I haven’t been able to get to in recent days.