Happy New Year

Happy New Year Everyone!

Well here we are at the end of 2011. Has it been a good year for you? I  hope so. It sure has for my Wife and me. We enjoy life and just move along with our lives. Before you ask, the flowers above are from Ireland. Here is a bit of Hemingway-esque about them:

We had gone that day up the road in the Mercedes with Jack asleep in the back seat with his Grandma Ann. It was a lovely day, and the countryside was as green as emeralds on a sunny day. We came into the village of Cloyne and immediately saw the enormous Round Tower there by the side of the road. What a surprise to see thousands (it seemed like thousands) of beautiful Bluebells blooming at the foot of the tower. How pleasant it was, bringing the beauty of the colors into our presence. Wonderful. Here is a quotation to consider: 

"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves."

       ---- Bill Vaughan

Which are you, an optimist or a pessimist? Well I will confess I am an optimist and look at each passing year as time gone by, now ready for the new experiences and adventures which 2012 holds. And it will be a wonderful year. See, that is what I mean being an optimist. It will be wonderful.

Do be an optimist and grab those adventures and experiences that you have coming before you. It makes life a magnificent experience!! Happy New Year all you optimists out there. 

Let's all have "A Grand Time Living," a title of a book by Don Blanding. Read it -- it is fantastic. Later from the Computer room. d

    

    

Christmas Lights

Ah, Christmas lights!! They are so beautiful in the night. On our street several houses are adorned with beautiful Christmas lights to welcome in the Holiday season 2011. For this photo, I used the cam on my iPhone with an app that one of my Daughter's told me about. It really works well.

We just returned from a brief shopping trip to the Mall, downtown. And I mean brief!! There seemed to be millions of shoppers all coming in cars and seeking a parking place. Seemingly endless lines of cars waited for the proverbial parking place. Is that man going out? How about that couple over there in the Lexus? Nope, appears they are just recovering from the drive to the Mall and are resting before getting out of their car and going into a store to get those kind of 'last minute gifts', that we all seem to have to get during the week before Christmas. Ah, but I have a secret. It is too early in this writing to tell you my secret, but will do before I finish this "Hemingway-esque" bit of literary nonsense on this December afternoon.

My Dad, bless him, always wanted a target pistol. Of course, we could never afford it with his and Mom's salaries in the 1950's and later. So my Mom bought him a beautiful ring with a red stone for Christmas and wrapped it in a shoe-box size box, with a hammer to weigh it down so it might appear to be something else. My Dad had lifted that box before Christmas, I don't know how many times, to kind of gauge the weight of the item inside. Well to make a long story short, was my Dad ever disappointed!! But he got over it, and all worked out fine and he liked the ring very much. The lesson here: Don't try to fool your loved ones with those kind of tricks, but I must confess--OH-OH, I have done a similar thing this Christmas in one of the packages for one of my beloved family members. I wonder if they have done that to one of my packages??8-))

I think back to Christmases spent on the ranch in Arizona with one of my Grandpas. What an interesting way of life: horses, cattle, the cowboys, hearing the generator going on out back when someone got up in the night, seeing the jerky out on the clothes line drying out. How delicious it was. And knowing that Grandpa Jay would send a shoebox full every year to us to enjoy! How great is that!!

So at this time of year, I find the tender and meaningful moments in my life are in my memories. I shall never forget them. Such things as the old house we lived in for many years in that small citrus producing town where I was a newspaper boy, shoeshine boy, and worked in grocery stores. I remember old C.J. the owner of one of the markets where my Mom worked and I did too later in life. You knew everyone in the small town, even by name. There was a J. C. Penney store and a Western Auto, where I bought one of my bicycles when I had earned enough money to do so. When Aunt Winna would be over visiting us, she would walk downtown with my Sister and me and buy us some clothes at Penney's. How kind it was of her in those days.

So Christmas is made of memories for us. The past is always interesting but so is the present, and as this Christmas comes to us, that old prayer that I once heard from a Pastor at a church is reigning in my mind:

"Lord, I do give thee thanks for the abundance that is mine."

----a Pastor

The Secret

"Christmas--that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance--a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved."

--Augusta E. Rundel

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, Everyone!!! Wow, time flows along thru this life very quickly. Memories flood my mind at this time of year, it seems. I remember when I was a boy, I wanted an electric train so bad! My family was a hard working family and really watched their finances. An expensive Lionel electric train like some of my friends had was far beyond our expense budget. I remember, laying in my bed at bedtime and hearing the adults playing with what I thought was an electric train, and it was. It had been passed down from a family who we were acquainted with, as their boys were young adults at that time, and it was one of the best presents I have ever had in my life. It mattered not that it was a used train. It was wonderful!!!

We decorated our tree the other day, after selecting it and bringing it home. Now at my age a 5-6 foot tall tree is difficult to bring or carry into the house. I used my hand truck, took it around to our patio back door and into the house. That was a good way to do it. Every year we talk about maybe down sizing the tree to a smaller one. We would probably need a table to place it on, and maybe we will.

How blessed we are with Christmas coming this year! We count our blessings everyday it seems. We will try to attend church on Christmas Eve, if we can, just recovering from flu, the both of us. Gosh what a debilitating illness.

I send out to our loved ones a special Christmas wish for the best in their lives: our Daughters, my Wife, our Grandchildren, and our Daughters' Husband and Boyfriend. I repeat, we count our blessings everyday and they are among our blessings.

I love quotations as some of you know. I want to close this issue of Blog with some of my favorite Christmas quotations. They follow:

"Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas."

~ Dale Evans

"I will honor Christmas in my heart,

and try to keep it all the year."

~Charles Dickens.

"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful."

--Norman Vincent Peale

"So remember while December Brings the only Christmas day, In the year let there be Christmas In the things you do and say."

-- Anonymous

"But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely."--Charles Dickens

"Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone."

~ Charles Schulz

Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more."

~ Dr. Seuss

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! ENJOY!