After Christmas - what now?

Christmas is over and life goes back to normal. 

Normal for  me will be training my puppy. She was an excitable little girl with her cousins to bark at and play with and with so many new people to jump on and faces to lick. January is going to be a time of concentrated training where I will learn how to control Lexie and she will learn that I am Alpha in this family.

I joined family and friends this Christmas for laughter and lots of good food. So much good food!! My niece Lee and her husband Dave, had us over for a great dinner. Dave cooked the most delicious tenderloin, and we brought our side dishes. Lee had fallen and dislocated her elbow a couple of days before but even with her arm in a sling, she was an excellent hostess.

Lyn Hunter, Real Estate Agent

We all congratulated Lyn who passed the test for her NC real estate license. Now she is licensed in Georgia and North Carolina. I hope she sells many, many houses in 2016, continuing her trend of pleasing clients.

Old friends Dick and Linda visited and brought a smoked turkey. Dick smokes a turkey every Christmas and shares with us. This year we vented about how fast the  world is changing including popular music.  We hate the way modern singers murder old familiar Christmas Carols. Why do they have to change the tunes we all love? In years to come, will the songs we have sung from childhood be jazzed up and made impossible for us to sing along?

We also discussed the  need for a landline phone even if you have cell phones. Cell phones often have no signal or lose signal while you are in the midst of a conversation. Between Murphy NC and Hayesville, NC we get no cell signal at all at certain places. My sister calls one of my nieces who cancelled her landline and uses only a cell phone and the signal drops out or is very sketchy when my niece is on her cell at home. We believe that just because something is new doesn't make it better. I will keep my landline which I can be sure will reach anyone I need in an emergency.  

Summer  weather in December??

Record warm temperatures in Atlanta required turning off the heat and going to air conditioning. I wish I had taken more summer clothes for the visit. Shorts or capris would have felt good with short sleeved shirts. The unusual weather brought bad storms and tornadoes to Mississippi andAlabama. It saddened me to  hear about the Christmas presents scattered up and down the streets and decorated trees thrown about as houses crashed down killing a number of people.

In our own joy we also stopped to be thankful for all our blessings and to think about those people who had lost so much.

Now I’m ready to head into a new year, to accomplish goals I’ve set and to stay as healthy as possible to complete my obligations to others.