My Christmas Notebook

Yesterday in my journal blog I mentioned my Christmas Notebook and I realized that maybe everybody is not familiar with that concept; so I decided to do a post about it here, for you Rebels.  My Christmas Notebook is an old spiral that I have kept my Christmas notes is since the kids were tiny little creatures.

At the top of the page I simply put what year it is.  I then make a column for each child; blessedly this year I got to add a whole column for our new son Austin.  In previous years that was always a bit tricky as I had to buy him the same thing I bought the other "friends".  Anyway, underneath each column (which takes up less than a third of the page in my family) I have plenty of room left to make a list of nieces and nephews.  Underneath that goes all of the couple gifts to my sisters and parents.  Lastly I have a list of neighbors and friends that I either bake for or have the kids make stuff for.

Originally, I just started the notebook out as a way to keep myself organized while I was shopping.  And also to avoid the embarrassment of giving the same gift 2 years in a row (or more like I did with the wreaths a decade or so ago, I got really into wreath making and gave them away 3 years in a row and totally forgot about it, lol!!!); but I have now found that is a wonderful trip down memory lane each year when I pull it out to prepare for Christmas shopping.

See, I keep all of the kids' Dear Santa letters in there paper clipped to each year that they wrote them as well.  So for instance the other day as I was going through and making my list and checking it twice, we found a couple of those old letters and now that the cat is out of the bag completely at my house; we pulled a few of those Santa letters out and read them as a family (well poor Dad was working, but the rest of us were here and boy did we crack up!).

The first one we read was so sweet from my daughter saying that she wanted a play pony (thank God for the "play" part, eh?) and something nice for her brothers.  And then we open up one from my oldest son, whom of course by this time knew that I was on the receiving end of these and had only sat down to write one to humor my daughter.  It said:  Dear Santa,  don't bring my sister or brother anything, not even coal, as they have been TERRIBLE this year.  Also, I will leave plenty of Lima Beans for your reindeer so they can fart their way across America.

Well, all righty then.  Merry Christmas to me.  I mean we all sat here and laughed until there were tears rolling down our cheeks.  Some were tender and sweet, okay only those from my daughter....  And some were funny as all get out, but they were all ones that I am so happy that I have in one place.

So make 2011 be the year you start your very own Christmas Notebook because it is so well worth it.  You will never have another repeat gift again, you will have wonderful memories to look back on and it doesn't have to be anything special.  Mine is an old spiral that one of the kids didn't use all of the pages in  in school.  Recycled!!!!  Oh, and don't forget the secret column up in the corner for stocking stuffers and Santa gifts!!!  That way even if the kids get ahold of your secret notebook, they will never know who S (for Santa) is....

Unbelievable!

My Crazy Turkeys

I know I have mentioned my Yahoo! groups before, but my very favorite is my Rare Heritage Turkey group.  To be fair, I don't follow that many, but these folks don't have (or at least adhere to) too many rules, and they aren't stuffy and they really seem to have a great sense of humor,er, senses of humors?!?

Anyway, recently one of the gals, who really adds a lot of "color" to the group posted asking for stories about turkeys.  On a different post, I had responded to her, accidentally misspelling her name which has started a name battle ever since.  So, I felt bad that not many people were responding to her pleas for stories and in my oh so smart alecky way I responded to her.

It appears she has forwarded my silly story to a friend and that friend would like to post the story on his site; so I figured I had better share my story with my very own readers first!  So here my letter to my e-friend is in it's entirety:

Okay DoRENE,
I have a story for you. I have a chocolate hen who is a bit, well....schedule oriented (spoiled). The other day my parents were up for dinner and were absolutely fascinated with the turkeys, who of course had surrounded their car upon their arrival with chortles of delight. That was until the turkeys realized that this company was going to interrupt their own dinner.

Mom and Dad had been just full of questions; the typical ones like how much do they eat, etc. But the very last one before we headed in as the turkeys followed us up the stairs and hopped up onto the railing of the second story porch was "turkeys don't fly do they?". They were quite concerned for their safety up that high (this of course is their favorite roosting spot as it looks over the whole valley, the road, the driveway, you get the point).

So we headed inside and started our pizzas and got busy with our visiting. The turkeys did not like the fact at all that we ignored their preening and pruning and gobbling and chirping on the front porch so they trooped down the stairs in a line. And I'm thinking to myself, "finally!!!"; as I figured they were headed back up to their pen to start their dinner without me like they sometimes do.

I'm standing in the middle of the living room telling a big story, flapping my arms about when suddenly there is a VERY LARGE THUD against the picture window (right behind where my Dad is sitting on the couch)!!! And there trying to balance on the 1/2 inch lip of the window is my beautiful chocolate hen calmly looking at me. When she realized there was no room for her she just gracefully swooped down to sit on the snowmobile with her Bourbon Red boyfriend (turkeys know no prejudice) to the utter amazement of my parents. It looked as if the two of them were threatening to ride off into the sunset (literally with the sun setting behind them) if I did not hurry up and feed them! And she had just nicely knocked on the window to make sure I knew that they were going...

Needless to say, they trumped my story so my Dad and I happily got our chore gear on and headed out to lead the pack up the hill for dinner. What the heck had I been thinking to feed company first?

JJ~

Santa, do you hear me, now even OTHER websites are requesting photos of my amazing animals???