OUR FIRST CHRISTMAS CARD!!

Our first card arrived very early this year, right after Thanksgiving.  It was from Kerr and Mary Montgomery of Irvine Scotland.  They are very dear people and we remember them fondly from Roots 97, and the Montgomery Scotland trip of 1998.

The first picture is of the Tournament bridge at Eglinton Park where the tournament was held in 1839 that nearly broke the Montgomery family because of the weather and the excessive expenditures to host the tournament.

The second picture is the Montgomery tartan.

We have received a lot of other cards since then and are very appreciative of them considering that we haven't sent any in two or three years.

First off, we had sickness and then we had brokenness and the cost of postage keeps going up.  I have four boxes stored upstairs waiting the opportunity to send them.  If the economy keeps going down hill that might not be for some time.

I have sent all my face book friends cards on line and I guess that will have to suffice for the time being.

I have always thought of Christmas as a magical time of year, and have always loved the holiday and all the wonderful things attached to it.  For many years I made little things for my friends at work, and the family.  It was so much fun when the kids were small (and I was working at Sears...employee discount.and toy department) to find just the things they wished for most.  We had some really great Christmas'. God is good!

Matt offered to get us a real tree this year, but I don't have room for any more mess, do I declined.  Then, I got thinking of the artificial tree, I won many years ago at the YMCA raffle.  I dug it out of the cellar, but I couldn't find the base.  

So DAD made one!

It already had lights, so we decorated it with some wooden stars and moons that came with it, and added some energizer bunny decorations that wouldn't break (we hope)  We both enjoyed looking out the dining room window at it and we left it lighted all night.

Then.......came the rains and the frost and the rain and the frost and the rain and the frost and the dark dingy days and the dark dingy days...

One morning Dad got up real early, as is his wont, and saw the the tree was bent over backwards onto the deck.  "Your tree fell over!" he said.

Come to find out it had broken right off at the base.  The ice and rain had been too much for the poor little thing.  He tried to fix it.  He drilled a larger hole in the base to stick more of the tree down into it, but the branches were in the way and it wouldn't go.  It laid there, lifeless, for a day or so.  Then, today while I was getting dinner, I heard a few thumps out in front.  I looked to be sure Dad was OK.  I worry about him when he goes out.  There in somewhat less than perfect condition was the little tree.  Now truly a Charlie Brown tree, standing up again but not on the railing of the deck, but down in front of it.  He had me plug it in.  The lights still work.  We have a Christmas Tree!!!  Merry Christmas To All!