Busy, Busy, Busy

"Busy, busy, busy." That's a line from the Christmas cartoon Frosty the Snowman. The evil magician utters those words. The holidays sure are busy, and sometimes it feels like there's a little magic needed to get everything done, and guilt for being busy. 

The week started off wonderful for me, though. I had a delightful helper (aka granddaughter). We baked cookies and decorated the golf cart, traditional Christmas and grandma stuff. She decorated golf balls for Papa and me. I do believe those magic golf balls have improved my game.

One of my favorite memories of our children growing up was the Friday after Thanksgiving. No, we did not spend the day in the crazy Black Friday shopping scene. That day was spent going through all their toys. We sorted, organized and cleaned. We reminisced about when they received the toys. We were grateful for all the wonderful memories with them, and, in the spirit of the season, donated some of the gently used ones. See, if they wanted Santa to bring more toys, they had to have room. It was surprising how their letters to Santa contained shorter wish lists this way.

This week I saw a posting online about the three stages of "stuff." How true! So this week, there was a lot of closet cleaning and donating. It is so easy to accumulate too much stuff. That said, I was very happy to find my large covered cake container on the very top shelf of the cupboard. I don't use it often, but it is very handy for when I do. Christmas is one of those times, when I make a large double-or-triple batch of Chex Mix for holiday snacking. It's a great place to hold the finished product until I can get it all bagged and tagged for gifts. It has been five years since I made this. I didn't think my smaller kitchen would be able to handle such an assembly process, but it worked just fine.

Last week I worked on interior Christmas decorations. This week has been exterior decorating and OH the beautiful sunsets I have enjoyed while working on placing the lights and decorations. Plus, I did not realize the trees at the end of our street were havens for the loudest, most beautiful birds happily chipping away as the sun sets. I'm sure for our neighbors close to those trees, the sound may become overwhelming because it is constant and loud. For me, it brought a smile at the beauty of the sky and the accompanying music. Nature! Add a full moon and what a wonderful week.

I keep thinking things will slow down and we will get more activity in besides golf and short walks. Hopefully this week we will. We definitely will the following week because we have tickets to a long-awaited excursion. Meanwhile, let the holiday fun commence with parties and friends gathering. How blessed we are!