Saturday, December 24, 2011

Santa is ready to rock and roll

Martini’s and Fred the Cat’s stocking are stuffed. Mr. Pop made his annual Christmas chocolate chip cookies this morning. The sweet potatoes are cooked, mashed, seasoned and ready to hop in the oven tomorrow. Tonight we will prepare a Christmas morning strata to cook for breakfast in the morning. So I would say we are pretty much ready for the jolly old man to visit tonight.

The girls at the lab delivered all things wonderful for our adopted family Thursday morning and were surprised to receive a picture of our family with Santa Claus and the sweetest thank you note I have ever read. The kids do not expect anything from Santa this year so they are going to be very happily surprised in the morning. It’s nice to be able to put faces on our adopted family, we have never been able to do that before. It’s especially nice to see those sweet little kid’s faces. They’ll be all big smiles tomorrow.

Santa will deliver our gift to us next Tuesday. Our very old refrigerator is just on life support so we decided to buy our house a new one. Rather than give each other just a bunch of stuff, for several years now we have instead bought something we wanted for the house. This year it’s a French door frig and freezer. I hope Santa doesn’t get a hernia when he makes his delivery.

A very Merry Christmas to everyone from me, Mr. Pop, Martini and even Fred the Cat
May peace be your nicest gift.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Ready, Set, Christmas

Getting ready for Christmas this year has been just plain fun. I guess feeling better than I have for years adds to that fun. Tomorrow we are going out shopping for a Cabbage Patch doll for the little girl in our adopted Christmas family. Ha! You think I’ll stop with just the doll she wanted? Oh decked holly halls, no. I already have two books for her and her big brother. This will be a Christmas that they’ll remember a long time….and so will we.

Next Saturday Mr. Pop will continue his tradition of baking chocolate chip and walnut cookies. I can’t wait for that aroma to fill this house with wonderfulness. But before that happens I will pick up my new glasses and be able to see clearly again. That’s almost better than having a visit from Santa.

See, I’m just full of fun and Christmas spirit. Ask Martini, he’s probably tired of me playing with him and singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”. But next Sunday morning when he wakes up, he’ll find out that I was right.

Friday, December 09, 2011

No More Bah Humbug Here

We have a family for Christmas. We contacted another organization and were met with much gratitude. They knew of a single mother with two small children and we were told they would be “more than grateful for anything this Christmas”. Boy, are those three people going to have a memorable holiday.

The mother is asking for clothes for the children, everything from underwear to shorts and shirts and sneakers. There was only a small mention of toys. And the mother said a turkey to cook for dinner on Christmas would be nice but that her children’s needs come first to her.

Oh yeah mom, that turkey is coming along with a lot of others good things to eat. Those little kids will get all the clothes they need along with fun gifts from some jolly marine biologists.

Now I’m ready to say it really will be a very Merry Christmas!

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Christmas Bummer

For the past several years Mr. Pop’s lab has adopted a family in need at Christmas. This was coordinated through the local United Way. This year when the lady at the lab called the United Way to adopt a family she was told the United Way will no longer be doing the White Dove project but instead asked that everyone take toys and food to the fairgrounds and everything would be distributed from there.

I called the United Way today and asked why they had discontinued the project in the way it had been done before. Before, we got all the food and gifts for the family and delivered everything to the home the weekend before Christmas. I think we all looked as forward to that day as we looked forward to Christmas when we were kids. The lady at the United Way said the project had been discontinued because it was “too much work” for the few people who used to coordinate the project. Too much work once a year?

I reminded the lady I was talking to that this was going to be a difficult holiday for a whole lot of families, maybe more than there has been at anytime in the recent history. She repeated her line about “too much work”. What work? All they had to do in the past was match up families in need with businesses who wanted to help. We did all the work buying, wrapping and delivering what was wanted and needed by “our families”.

I explained to the lady that dropping off food and gifts at the fairgrounds just didn’t have the same feeling about it as seeing a mother receive food and gifts for her children when she had no hope for getting anything for them. Especially when the kids were getting some of the things they had asked of Santa. Talk about your heart swelling to three times its size.

We have a lot of money to spend and a lot of love to share and by god, we’re going to find someone to receive our Christmas gifts. We are going to call other organizations and churches until we find a family who needs us. No one is going to tell us that there isn’t a Santa Claus this year because we know better.