Merry Christmas

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. Ours was busy, like many of yours, but once all the planning and preparing was done, we could sit down and enjoy the festivities.

We had our immediate family's Christmas on the Saturday before due to schedules. We traveled to our daughter's home because she is 9 months pregnant and not traveling. We had a great time, great food and fun presents. I also was able to help with getting the baby's nursery ready for her -- that was fun. One of the gifts I received was an Ipod Nano. I'm pretty excited about playing with this new toy. I've already put more than 300 songs on it and looking for more CDs to add to it. My son also got me a set of speakers so I won't have to use the earbuds all of the time.

My daughter and SIL bought me a beautiful necklace with my initial on it. I've been wanting one like this for some time. The initials are similar to the picture on the left. I don't have a picture of the actual necklace. They also gave me silver ice bucket that is very chic.

Monday, Christmas Eve, we hosted my husband's family at our house. We take turns around the family and this year was us. We had 13 family members and served brisket and turkey along with mashed potatoes and then family members brought vegetables, salad, appetizers and goodies. I prepared a punch that was very popular. I used 1 quart cranberry juice, 1 c. sugar, 2 c. orange juice, 1 c. pineapple juice, 3/4 c. lemon juice, and 2 c. ginger ale. I substituted the sugar with Splenda and only added to taste.

For the place settings, I sewed a Christmas stocking for the silverware and a quilt square for table decoration using the same material. For the nameplate I scanned a piece of the material and then created a name tag in Word. Everyone really liked how all three coordinated.

Now it is time to rest for a week or so before the grandbaby comes. Our daughter just found out that she will need to have a C-Section because the baby is breech, so our calendars are marked for January 9.

This has been a rather long post, but before I sign off, I wanted to introduce a new blog. My daughter and SIL started a new blog entitled Continue the Conversation. Check it out -- they list many ways where you can give back to the community and the world.