Closing out the Year

Today has been a rough one for me because I decided to take down the Christmas decorations. There seem to be more now than when I put them up; what happened, I don't know. I did add a couple of new items but it shouldn't have taken so long to get everything put away. I have just now finished; however, I still have some non-Christmas decorations that I want to put out. I received a few new things as Christmas gifts and I need to decide where I want to put them. But, not tonight. I am too tired from climbing up and down the stairs about 8 times I think. The worst thing was cleaning up the needles from the stairs where I had wrapped live pine garland. I don't think I will try that again because when it dries out, it does leave a good many needles around. Actually, though, that job wasn't as bad as climbing the stairs, getting ornaments off the tree and wrapping them so they wouldn't break. I can't believe that I never got out to shop the after-Christmas sales so I suppose they are all over now.

We did have a wonderful Christmas and I miss my family coming and going. Kendra has been busy cleaning her own house that I haven't seen much of her since the big day. The children stopped by a few minutes today but only Livvy came in; Clay was busy driving his F150 truck. I believe that was money well spent.

Monday is New Year's Eve and we will have a few couples coming over for our annual get-together to close out the year. We enjoy sitting around and talking. At midnight, we will watch the ball drop on 2008, extend best wishes to everyone, and then have a light breakfast. We enjoy this time with our friends.