OMG, I Love Christmas!

Ever since I was a little girl I have always loved Christmas.  I have never been concerned if I got gifts or not, I just love the season, the meaning behind Christmas, the lights and just about everything that comes with the season.  I love Christmas so much that I usually start shopping in January and usually have everything wrapped by Thanksgiving.

This Christmas we were fortunate that we had both our daughters and their families here for Christmas Eve and Christmas day.  We did all of our family traditions and added a few new ones. 

We start preparing for Christmas on Thanksgiving.  This is when we pull out the tree, yes it is an artificial tree, I have a hard time cutting down a tree just to sit in my house for a couple of weeks when an artificial tree works just fine.  On the morning of Thanksgiving, we pull out appetizers along with all the Christmas decorations and turn on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  As soon as the parade is over football comes on in one room and Christmas movies in the other.  Usually by the time the parade is over we have all the decorations out and ready to start decorating.  I do the inside of the house and my husband heads outside to decorate outside.  We spend the day decorating while also cooking our Thanksgiving meal.  By the end of the day we usually have the tree up, gifts under the tree, part of our Christmas village, lights on the house and other decorations displayed throughout the house.  We get up the next morning and finish our decorating jobs.

The day after Thanksgiving is when I start working on our Christmas letter as well as the Christmas cards.  Our Christmas letter is really a family letter describing what we did for the past year.  It is a lot of fun to work on as it requires me to look back over the year and remember all the great thinks that we did.  After the letters are printed and the cards are addressed they are ready to be mailed.  I usually wait until the following Monday to mail them, sometimes I’m too excited so they go out that day. 

Once in a while we will go out and do some black Friday shopping but we wait until the afternoon in hopes that the crazy people have all gone home for some much needed rest.  We start baking our Christmas goodies the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  We plan out what times of goodies we are planning on making, who we are sending them to and who we are going to hand deliver to.  We both enjoy this time.  I always make my fudge, which is requested by many, my husband makes a wide variety of cookies.  This process usually takes us several days but seeing the happiness on he faces of those we care about when we give them these goodies makes it so worth it.

At this point we are now able to enjoy Christmas movies.  I have a set schedule of what movies I watch and I rarely go outside the box and change them up.  I start off with Miracle on 34^th Street, on to Elf, then onto Santa Clause 1, 2 and 3, after this it is time for both Home Alone movies and then if I’m lucky I watch Vacation Family Christmas.  I always end my Christmas movie watching with White Christmas.  In between watching the Christmas movies, I also watch Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the Grinch.  I like to do this with a big bowl of popcorn in my sweatpants with comfy socks on my cold feet.

One of the things we like to do as a family is load into the car and go look at Christmas lights.  When the kids were young we would grab hot chocolate and just drive around various neighborhoods, as they got older we would go to Opportunity Village and the last couple of years we have headed to Ethel M. Chocolate Factory, who doesn’t like to get chocolate while looking at Christmas lights? 

Something we have done a couple of times is draw names for a secret Santa gift exchange, take $20 and buy stuff for our stockings. It is a lot of fun.  You have to spend all $20 and if you don’t then the remaining $20 goes into the stocking.  This year we filled out questioners which helped a great deal when making your purchases.  We then wrap them and fill our secret Santa stocking.  On Christmas Eve we eat fried chicken with coleslaw and French fries.  While eating our food we open our stockings from our Secret Santa.  We have to guess who drew our name which is not always easy.  The gifts are meant to be silly gifts, this year my husband drew my grandson’s name, he asked for food items such as Hamburger Helper, Shake n’ Bake and hot chocolate.  So my husband got him Hamburger Helper, Shake n’ Bake, chocolate covered pretzels, hot chocolate and since he said that he liked the scent of vanilla he also got a room deodorizer.  We all laughed because it was such an unusual gift selection but it’s what he wanted. 

After everyone goes to bed the rest of the gifts are delivered by Santa Clause and the stockings are filled once again from Santa.  When everyone gets up in the morning we eat cinnamon twist coffee cake, drink coffee or hot chocolate and then begin to open presents.  This year our grandson was given the task of handing out the presents, he did such a great job.  After all the presents are opened we spend the rest of the morning playing with our gifts and napping for those of us that got up way too early.  One tradition that we stick to when opening presents is we save all the bows, I know bows are cheap but I have a hard time not reusing them so we save them and reuse year after year. 

Christmas dinner has changed through the years.  When our girls were little we used to have ham, mashed potatoes, rolls and a vegetable.  We now have prime rib, backed potatoes, salad, rolls and a vegetable.  We are not big dessert people so we either don’t bother to serve any or we have ice cream.  This year we made hot chocolate ice cream, which was delicious.  By the end of the day we are all tired but happy and content.

While our Christmas is busy we still take time to remember the true meaning of Christmas.  It’s not about presents, food or shopping, it’s about the birth of Jesus.  While we enjoy all the traditions remembering the birth of Jesus is the most important part of the holiday season.  I hope that your Christmas was as special as mine, God Bless you!

OMG, Politics!!!!

Both the Republican and Democratic conventions are over and now it is time for the bashing of each party to really get started.  I listened to both sides with as open a mind as I could, however it was not always easy.  This blog is my own personal opinion and is not meant to persuade anyone to one side or another.   

I’m going to start with Donald Trump.  While some feel that he has no filter and in all reality he doesn’t, which is a trait I happen to admire as this is how I live my life.  Never ask me a direct question unless you are prepared for a direct answer.  What I like about Trump is that he is not a career politician and so therefore he has not had 35 plus years to hone his skills of using a lot of words to say absolutely nothing. 

Some say that he is a bully.  I don’t necessarily agree with this.  I think that he is someone who speaks his mind which I know can come across as being a bully.  I hope that all of those that are judging him on this remembers that Harry Reid used to do the same thing but worse, he would destroy someone’s life and not think anything about it, Donald Trump has, to the best of my knowledge, never done that.

Some say that he hates women.  If he really hated women would he have married such strong independent women?  Would his daughter be a strong independent woman?  I can say NO he would not, he would be married to someone like Michelle Duggar who feels that her husband is the king of the house and that she should be there for him no matter what and his daughters would be like the Duggar girls.  The tag line that the Democrats like to use is him say “she had blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming from I don’t know where”, I took that to mean that she was looking at him with hate and evil in her eyes. 

I have heard that he plans on putting up a wall around the boarders.  We are a diverse nation and will always be one, no matter if there is a wall or not.  I’m all for people coming here to the US, but I want them to come here legally.  I want them to do what my ancestors did.  So I guess I’m for putting up a wall if it forces people to come here legally.

It has been said that he has caused contractors that worked on his buildings to go bankrupt.  I really have a hard time believing this.  I would like to see the contracts that the individuals signed.  There are ways of getting your money and clearly they did not do any of the things that they needed to do.  Also did they even read or have their agreements reviewed?  I would say probably not, but I’m just guessing.  I have only heard others talk about these companies but have never heard anyone from these companies step forward and say that this really happened so to me it’s just another way to try and convince people to vote for Hillary and not Donald.  So sad that she has resorted to lies.

Now on to Hillary Clinton.  First off I’m going to say this, she is a career politician she has been coached on what to say and when to say it.  She changes her political viewpoints to insure that she will get more votes and not because she really truly believes the words coming from her mouth.   

She stood on a stage and talked about women’s rights, how she is there for all women and that she was breaking the glass ceiling, seriously!!!!  I remember a few years ago when her husband was accused of sexual harassment, what did Hillary do?  I can tell you she did not stand behind these women, even knowing what a pig her husband was.  She could have easily sat and said nothing but not her she decided it was best to trash these women in the media.  I’m not sure about how you feel but knowing that this is her way of standing up for women’s rights but it makes me sick.  She could have handled the situation with more class but she chose to take the gutter route instead.

She talked about how Trump wants to put a wall up around our boarders and that she is not for that.  I guess she has forgotten that she voted several times to do this exact thing.  She stated that those that come here are not taxing on our resources and that we should welcome them with open arms.  I disagree with her on this.  Take a look at our schools, not only do our already over worked, over stressed teachers who have to deal with so many other issues now have to add to their stress by how they are going to teach these children that do not speak the language, don’t these children deserve more?  Also have you ever been to the emergency room?  When people come here illegally they do not have healthcare so they are not getting preventative healthcare, instead they rely on our emergency rooms which then means that doctors can’t treat those that have true emergencies because they are taking care of those without insurance.  Also speaking of insurance what about car insurance?  If someone comes here illegally they do not go out and get a driver’s license, so therefore they do not have car insurance.  Who ends up paying for this if they are in an accident?  I can tell you it’s those of us that have car insurance.  But remember they are not taxing to our resources.

Let’s talk about her healthcare plan.  She is all for Obama Care, I guess she can because I’m sure that the tax payers pay for her insurance and she has no idea what health insurance costs, especially since Obama Care went into effect.  I am fortunate because the company I work for pays my insurance for me so every month I look at it as a bonus but others are not so fortunate.  I handle our accounts payable at my job so I see the health insurance bill every month and I can say that if I had to pay for health insurance I probably would go without insurance.  If I was a family of 4 it would cost me 1 pay check a month to pay for health insurance.  That means 50% of my salary would go to health insurance, I’m not sure what she call’s affordable but that is not affordable. 

At the end of the day I could almost live with all of her flaws, however I cannot live with the fact that as Secretary of State she could not distinguish between personal and confidential governmental emails.  I cannot trust someone who does not understand this very basic part of her job.

At this point I’m sure you can figure out who I’m voting for.  I do want to point out that if you are voting for Hillary just because she is a woman then please do us all a favor and stay home that day because you really do not deserve to vote because you are a clueless person, I guess that is the Donald in me coming out.