Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A Birthday, A Birthday....

...oh who has had a birthday?  Why that would be me!

Nothing like having my daughters home to bake me a chocolate cake and help me celebrate.  Here I am trying to light all those candles with Lys.  She and Ash gave up on trying to represent my years by candles and just went for spelling out Happy Birthday.  Another year older and hopefully another year wiser!

Why I Need to Put My Laundry Away Right Away

It was just too tempting on a cold morning -- warm, folded towels, washcloths and cleaning rags, sitting in a chair, waiting to be put away.  Scarlett didn't appreciate being awoken from her nap for the picture taking as you can see from her one eye open, one eye half shut pose. 

I've been on a cleaning jag lately.  My daughters begin arriving this Thursday for in and out days up to and including Christmas, so this morning I'm sprucing up their rooms -- washing sheets and blankets, dusting and vaccuming.  Then this afternoon you'll find me back in the bonus room.

Ahh, the bonus room has been my project room way too long!  Through the years it has been a combination of the girls' play room/TV room, a home office, exercise room, scrapbooking room, and always storage room.  It has some fantastic features!  It's a room that was added on to the house, above the garage, by the previous homeowners.  You approach it via a nice stairway from the family room downstairs.  It's open, with large windows on three sides so I feel like I'm in a tree house.  It has a large walk-in closet and floor to ceiling cupboards along one wall (the fact the storage boxes still spill over into the main room is a sign I need to get rid of more stuff).  My husband's huge desk, credenza, the desk top computer and printer are the main features of one front corner.  The treadmill is in another corner. The rest of the room is up for grabs in terms of purposing.

But I have ideas!  Organizing the office area into sections for my nonprofit, volunteer projects, hobbies, and personal files is a given.  Then a hobby section where I can spread out my paper craft supplies, photos and albums, and genealogy records.  The treadmill stays and maybe that exercise corner needs enhanced with things that will inspire and make it more 'spa' like.  Do I need music there?  The entire room needs better lighting and a fresh color scheme.  There will be trips to the recycle center and Goodwill in my future.  And the room needs a new name.  I hate the name "bonus room" -- it needs to be my studio, my office, or my hobby room.  Something more definitive.

Time to get busy!

The Precious Children

It's my unspoken rule that I don't blog about news per say, especially bad news.  There is enough media coverage without my adding to the fray when something goes wrong in this world.  But today my blog rules are being broken.

Having spent the majority of my career helping children, including many years in the public schools, remaining silent would not be honoring those who lost their lives and those who lost their innocence and those who lost their children, sisters, brothers and mothers yesterday. 

But then how do you come up with words that can even convey the heaviness of heart our entire country is feeling....

Prayers for the families. 

Santa Lucia Day

One of my favorite blogs I follow is the Paris Daily Photo -- it just makes me feel close to Paris to see what is going in that fair city.  Eric Tenin, the wonderful blog author, published a beautiful video today of the Swedish Church of Paris performing in a Santa Lucia Concert.  Check out his youtube video of the choir's angelic voices at http://www.parisdailyphoto.com/2012/12/santa-lucia-concert-at-swedish-church.html

When I was in elementary school we performed a program for our parents called Christmas Around the World.   I was chosen to represent Sweden as Saint Lucia and wore a crown of leaves and candles while pretending to bring my parents breakfast on Christmas morn.  I still remember how very special I felt. 

The feast of Saint Lucia is celebrated on December 13th and heralds the beginning of the Christmas season.  St. Lucia is considered a bearer of light.

Merry Christmas

The stockings have been hung by the chimney with care, the tree has been adorned with ornaments and lights, and my wind up Santa is on the entry table with my snow globes once again.  Christmas is in the air. Packages have been mailed to my sisters on the east coast.  Tonight I will finish wrapping the gifts my daughters and I purchased for the family we adopted so I can deliver them tomorrow.  I have just a little more shopping to do and then it's on to the baking!

Joyeux Noel!

What the World Needs Now Is Love, Sweet Love!

One of the many hats I wear is that of director of a nonprofit organization that supports a school and orphanage in Kenya. The kids live in extreme poverty that we can not imagine (no electricity or running water, squashed into one or two room shacks in the slums of Nairobi).  We help in several ways -- finding grants, fundraisers, processing donations, and operating a child sponsorship program.

Last week letters arrived from the children to their sponsors -- three large envelopes full of hundreds of letters!  

This involved sorting, addressing and stuffing dozens and dozens of envelopes. I really don't mind chipping away at this project in the evenings as I know how important correspondence is between the children and their sponsors.  Some people knit while watching TV in the evening, I stuff envelopes.  It's a labor of love.

This also involved spending a good 45 minutes at the post office working with my friendly postman on Friday to get them on their way to the sponsors.  Some had to be weighed so that took some time.  I had sorted them according to USA regular, USA with extra postage required (because some people sponsor more than one child, their envelopes were fatter), overseas regular, and overseas extra postage required.

Now I HAVE to tell you a story about sending these letters off! Of course, the post office line was growing longer and longer as I was monopolizing one of the three postman.  Just as I was feeling a little sorry to be holding things up during the postal holiday season, the postman, reading the return address, asked me what Plant-a-Book International was.  I explained that we are a group of people from all over the world that have joined together to support a school and orphanage in Kenya and that the envelopes contained letters from their sponsored children.  He was looking at the letters going to Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Canada, Australia, Croatia, Germany, Denmark, Scotland, Finland, The Netherlands, England, Ireland, Spain, France, and all over the USA and he said, "So you are bringing people from all over the world together to help these kids?"  I said, "Yes."  He said, "The world needs more people like you!"  My spirits were soaring when I left there!  I couldn't have received a more meaningful compliment.

Tis the season...for giving!