Am I The Only One Who Hasn't Shopped Yet??

Christmas week sure has shown up earlier than I had planned on... The boys have a short week at school this week, getting out early on Thursday at noon. I picked up a beautiful 8.5 to 9-foot tree last week for only $25 and I had it on the front porch for a couple days while I looked for my tree stand. After failing to find the stand, we headed out to the store we got the tree from and picked up a nice stand on Saturday. Come Sunday, Aaron was regularly asking, "Dad, you going to put the tree up today? Please put the tree up, Dad. Have you decided if you're going to put the tree up yet? Put the tree up now, DAD!!" I finally buckled and put it up this weekend. It comes to within about 4 inches of the 9-foot dining room ceiling. I was unable to fit the whole tree into the picture it was so big. Not quite in Clark W. Griswold proportions, though...

As for activities Christmas week, I'm still finding a free day to get out to the stores and get my shopping done once and for all. The choir at Trinity is on hiatus until January, so that gives me one extra evening I didn't have before. Aaron has another trip to the water park at Seven Clans Casino on Wednesday with his regular third grade class that'll be from about noon to 3:00. On Christmas day, we had a change in plans and will be heading over to the Wigness' house to enjoy dinner with Jerry and Marilyn and their kids.

Thief River has all their Christmas lights up now on the street and things are looking much more seasonal now. K-mart has a giving tree set up and Pennington County is doing a program where they give gifts to needy families with children. I asked the boys if they would like to take some money from their piggy bank and contribute and both were excited at the idea of giving other kids in town here the opportunity to enjoy Christmas like them. We drove to the Law Enforcement Center (Daniel was excited to see the police department from the inside). Once there, we actually met Sheriff Mike Hruby himself at the dispatch window and were directed to "Santa's Workshop" downstairs in the basement of the Law Enforcement Center. Once down there, we saw this long hallway, about the length of a swimming pool, each wall stacked about 5 feet high with wrapped presents. We were escorted into a side room where there were still more presents waiting to be sorted and wrapped. Digi-Key, the computer part company in town here donated all the boxes for wrapping and the paper. There was a virtual mountain of them waiting for presents. We saw many recipient lists for children from 3 years old on up to early teens so the boys could learn where their donation would be spent. The coordinator, Maria, told us she had just collected the unclaimed gift slips from the giving tree today and there were about 40 remaining for kids that hadn't had anything given to them, so she told the boys that's where their money would go. The kids on the Lincoln High School Student Senate will go shopping with the money in the next few days to finish the project. The volunteer coordinator suggested the boys could come back in a few years and wrap presents themselves. Aaron suggested coming back to donate again next year as he felt so good about sharing with the other kids.

The boys then went to the library in town and picked out a half dozen books to read over Christmas break and we're back home (finally) to relax before bedtime. It's truly going to be a white Christmas over here too. We got about a foot of snow on the front lawns and the sides of the street have about 2-1/2 feet of it piled up on the curbs. There's not a bare stretch of road in town. It got so cold last night, too, that the Weasel failed to start last night and I got a ticket for parking on the street on a "calendar parking" day (when they come through with the snow plow). It finally warmed up to 11 degrees by the afternoon, though, so I was finally able to start it and move it in the back alley. Unfortunately the defroster doesn't work now either, so I'm scraping the inside of my windshield with ice shavings across my dashboard like a winter landscape. Gotta love these Minnesota winters!!