"It's the most wonderful time of the year"

"Full of holiday greetings and great, happy meetings,

 and everyone telling you, " be of good cheer".

It's the most wonderful time of the year! 

I took a few liberties with the original song, but you get the idea,  and actually, for me, it is one of the best times of the year.

Around here, the Christmas season starts the day after Thanksgiving.  No, we did not go shopping on Thanksgiving Day.  We didn't even go out early on Black Friday.  Tom and I went to our usual breakfast gathering and then met up with Jill, who slept in.  She wanted to take advantage of the kids still being away to get some shopping done, and since none of us were fighting for a big screen TV, we took our time, running some errands and getting a few more things tended to in her house before setting out for IKEA.  We made some purchases there and stopped by REI to make a few more.  Done with that we returned home to coordinate Christmas wish lists and then take the cat to the vet.

Josy Fuzzbutt came in from outside limping badly late Tuesday evening, and obviously in pain.  She spent much of the next three days hiding under beds. 

 We finally decided we'd better find out what was wrong.

Josy has a sports injury.  She blew out her knee; tore her cruciate ligament.  Surgery is not usually done on cats for this, and she'll be gimpy until  the other supportive tissues can strengthen to compensate.  She's slowly returning to normal but will be spending most of her time inside for a while.

Jill stayed and enjoyed turkey leftovers with us that evening.

Saturday Tom and I traveled to Oregon to attend a 70th Wedding Anniversary party for my mother's cousin.  There we spent the afternoon visiting with some of my siblings and cousins from several generations.

 I'm sure the "bride", Florence, could still wear her wedding dress from 1943.

Later, we checked into our hotel, the Best Western, Woodburn, OR, where we had a free room from using our BW reward points.  I went for a long walk as it got dark, and then we headed to dinner and shopping at the nearby outlet mall.

By now the crowds had diminished and we bought a few things, some on our list, and some impulse purchases.  We were back in our room by 8:30 and settled in for the night.

We got a fairly early start Sunday morning because the weather forecast was for heavy rain.  We lucked out with light traffic most of the way, and only one short period of heavy rain.  We were home in Seattle by 12:30.  I guess things got a lot worse out on I-5 after that.

It wasn't raining at home, and it wasn't icy yet (that's coming) so Tom got the lights up on the house.  He also got all of the boxes and tubs of Christmas decorations down out of the attic and stacked in the garage.

Inside, I cleared off all of the shelves in the family room, stored the pottery collection and put out the Santa collection.

I also began shopping on line.

Today I did some more shopping on line, and I'm just about finished with the necessary gift shopping.  Now I can just "shop" for fun, and not in malls or big box stores.

I also made fruit cake and went for a long walk in the cold sunny air.

The fruit cake will be wrapped in brandy soaked cheese cloth and then plastic bags to age for a while.  I need to go do that soon.

Tom went over to Jill's house to check out several more issues.  Tomorrow afternoon he will go back over while an appliance repairman works on the oven and a plumber works under the sink. This is an ongoing process.

The Seahawks were on Monday Night football tonight.  I found fresh Dungeness crab on sale at Safeway this morning, the first of the season.  So this evening Tom and I had our first crab feed while watching the Seahawks overpower the Saints 34 to 7.  

Tomorrow will be another busy day - more decorating, a haircut for me, and hopefully a walk.  

'Tis the season to be busy.  And to be of good cheer.