My bustle is hustled out!

All the Christmas get-togethers are done as of today. We all ate too much and got some great gifts. Most importantly, we spent loads of time with family and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. I didn't get many 'Christmas' photos but got some good pics of family that I'll share here. First one above is my sister, Annette and her husband, Gary.







Next is my brother, Jerry and his wife, Angela.

Then I HAVE to show the picture of my brother (above) with his first harvested deer. He's only been hunting for the last 2 or 3 years and he finally got a deer. A 6 point buck at that. He was so excited he was bubbling. He's got a fantastic fun-loving personality anyway and it was pure joy to see how excited he was to get his first deer. This next picture may be too graphic for some to view so consider yourselves warned. This is just a part of life in the South and Yes, we do eat the meat :-)

We don't go all out with gifts at Christmas anymore. The kids are grown so we give them money usually so they can choose what they want. Nelson got me a beautiful Elgin watch that I really needed. I had not had a 'good' watch in a long time and he did a fantastic job choosing which style to get me. My mom gave me a Swiffer Wet Jet that I'd been considering buying for myself. She loves hers and I'm hearing the same comment from other SWJ owners as well. I haven't tried it yet because my floors today needed much more than a Swiffer to be cleaned up. (They were pretty gross!) Nelson got them with the mop before our guests got here. My back doesn't let me do too much heavy cleaning so I'm usually the one dusting and putting clutter back in its place. He does the heavy stuff normally and lets me do the laundry. System works well for us :-)

My favorite gift this year is an antique cake server that my Mom passed down to me from my grandmother (Nanny). Mom said Nanny only had 2 pieces of real silver and Mom passed one of them to me. Mom presented it to me with the most beautiful note that explained the background of the piece along with a notation that she knows I will treasure it. She is SO right; I was immeasurably touched and grateful to receive something so precious.

Nelson and I had talked about getting a new flat panel television for our Christmas gift to each other. Now we're debating between the television and a new sofa/loveseat for the living room. The sofa we have is so soft that noone wants to sit on it because it's so hard to get up from haha  And the two recliners in there are very old and look pretty tacky. They're comfortable and in good mechanical shape though. I doubt they're worth paying someone to recover them and I sure don't know how to do that. So now Nelson and I have to decide between the television or the furniture. We certainly don't NEED the tv and we could use nicer furniture for those times when we have guests. Decisions, decisions ;-)

I spent all day Saturday with my almost-14 year old niece, Kristina. She loves art and is beginning to dabble in collage which is my favorite thing to play with too. She and I spent several hours in Wal Mart yesterday looking at art supplies (and everything else in the store). I enjoyed spending time with her so much and hope we get to do it more regularly.  I've had a cold since Christmas Eve and didn't feel much like playing with any of my art projects when I actually had a stretch of time that I could have. Thankfully the worst part of the cold was over before any of our get-togethers were scheduled. I just hope I didn't pass it on to everyone I came in contact with over the last few days.

Enough rambling. Christmas at our house was wonderful. We have all been blessed far more than we deserve and several family members made the comment this year that we are grateful for what we have and really couldn't think of another thing we actually need. We all know people who are dealing with critical illness or recent losses of loved ones at this time of year and our hearts and prayers go out to them.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas with lots of love and laughter. God Bless You!