Progress with help!

The tree decorating got underway with several helpers today. Joy and Esther-Noel came over first. The top row of pictures shows their work. The middle top picture shows most of Esther's hard work...most on the same branch! They are looking at the Fisher Price Nativity ornament that I bought for the tree the year that we gave them the FP Nativity. This afternoon Graham and Abigail came over after they got their school work done. You can tell that they are taller as the ornaments went up a little higher on the tree when they were finished. Looks like we need our two grandchildren, who are now in the 6 ft. range, to come to decorate the top! The picture on the bottom right is of the color sorting robot that Graham built on Saturday when Melany, Erin and Alex were here. He had some help from Alex and also Aunt Melany when building it. But today he followed all the steps to get it programmed all by himself. You put the colored balls on a platform and they roll into a place and the robot tells outloud what color they are and then deposits them in the correct place on the spinning front part. Very neat. Great job, Graham!

This morning Woody got up and made himself some pancakes. When I got up, they were all gone. But have no fear my neighbors (Nathan and Kathy) were looking out for me and they invited me over to their house for breakfast. They were having Nathan's prize-winning biscuits (He won first place for his biscuits in a 4-H Martha White baking contest when he was in 3rd and 4th grade. He beat out the girls!). Now these weren't the ones he made back all those years...just the same recipe! So I ate breakfast over there and then came home to continue with the ongoing decorating! I told Woody that I was finished decorating the kitchen and then this afternoon I found a box that had more trees to put up above the cabinets...and...I forgot that I haven't redone the shadow box in the kitchen for Christmas...so a bit more to do in there. Woody did our weekly grocery shopping...his workout for the day. Later in the afternoon he went over to a fellow coin collector's house. I had two sets of children in for decorating. The little girls also helped me get the doll corner upstairs ready for Christmas...and had a pretend tea party with the dolls. So sweet! Both sets enjoyed looking at the ornaments as they took them out of their boxes and wrappings. Abigail sang Christmas songs while she helped put ornaments on the tree.

I headed off to the church about 4:30 and got home around 7. I shelved a lot of returned books and then processed five books and two DVD's getting them ready to be checked out. When I got home from church, Woody was downstairs wrapping presents while watching the PBS Christmas special.

'Tis the season!