Only 1 week to go...

and today I finally got Greg to call his mom so we know what we're doing for Christmas - having dinner on Boxing Day with her and Greg's nephew & family. Whew... I love having nothing to do on Christmas Day; it's so liberating!

Holly and I made our first gingerbread house yesterday. Fortunately it was from a kit 'cause that was as much as we could handle for our first time out. It's killing her that we're not letting her eat it all right now.

But I know it won't make it till Christmas!

So, here at last is the photo from our dinner at Chutney's on Wednesday...I was going to try to crop most of myself out of it but gave up. What the heck, there's only a few people going to see it! That was a fun evening, great food - maybe except for Heather who turned out to regret being so adventurous, right? And wonderful Christmas presents too. And we topped it all off with an action-packed trip to Wal-Mart where we saw somebody make off with a big screen TV. Who knew that WM employed tiny little old ladies as security guards? She must have been 80 if she was a day and she nearly caught the guy too.

And of course we can't forget the meeting of the boots! I even got to wear mine out again today, as Holly didn't leave the house. They really are wonderful...

In other news, we had our library Christmas lunch on Friday, tons & tons of food. I'm sure enough left over to feed both the Saturday & Sunday staff. My Secret Santa gift obviously came from someone who doesn't know me very well - it was kitchen stuff! Silicone mitts, trivet & mini-muffin pan. Very cool and I have used the mitts already. Thursday night's book club Christmas party was a fairly small group but we had fun anyway talking about the book (Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None) and a variety of other things. And last night was the Sons of Norway Christmas party which was a surprisingly good time, and there were more than 80 people there which was a shock. It was for adults & kids and the young kids were so funny, they just had a blast. We sang & danced around the tree (Norwegian tradition) and the Julenisse came with gifts for all of them. The Julenisse definitely needs a new beard, he was looking pretty ratty.

So, Holly's 13th birthday coming up on Saturday. A few kids are going to Red Robin for lunch and then to the matinee of Eragon. It sounds like fun and I guess I'll just try to stay unobtrusively in the background, coming out in time to pay the bill. Unfortunately they're too old for the children's menu now...