This close to Christmas, everyone is busy either baking something good, buying and wrapping presents, or just doing things that need to be done before Christmas. In our house it’s the same. I was able to have a few more Christmas candy orders this year and have really enjoyed making all of it. I’m not quite done yet and will finish in the morning. I had to make an emergency run to the Amish store yesterday because I was afraid that I would run out of chocolate before I had all the platters done. I knew it would be close and I had some extra time to go and get some more. I didn’t mind at all doing that errand. When I do go to the Amish it’s always an adventure. Even though their community is only about 45 minutes from our house, they have a couple of inches of snow on the ground. We will be having a brown Christmas this year and with the temperature around 40 degrees today – it looks like it won’t be white for awhile. OK, back to my Amish story. So I was at the general store and talking to the owner about how much chocolate that I was going to buy. I didn’t need a whole lot and when he was looking for a box for me to take it home in, he couldn’t find one. So he wanted to know if I would buy a complete box of chocolate. Now was the time for me to bring out the skills that I’ve learned from this one TV show. The show deals with a pawn broker and he is always trying to get something for less than the people want to sell it for. Well… I gave this guy my bottom line if I would buy the box and he hee hawed around and finally said, ‘Well OK’. So now I’ve got 50 lbs of chocolate to use. Come to think of it, I think he might be smiling also. But when I was leaving and heading back home, I was feeling like I had some kind of treasure in my car. 50 lbs. of chocolate sounds like a lot, but it does store pretty well and I guess I’ll just have to make more candy!
50 pounds of chocolate
Other things that are going on is that Daryl has made a new pen for our female collie, Reno. She’s acting like she’s pregnant and if she did get bred, she should have her puppies in January. If she’s not pregnant, she’s doing a really good job getting sympathy from us and really loading up on a lot of petting and extra treats. She still is enjoying the eggs in the morning and her coat is so shiny from all the extra protein.
We had a chance to talk to Kyle before he left for Rome and haven’t heard yet that he made it there safe. He was going to find an Internet spot and give us an update. Now I’m sure that he has much more fun things to do – but I sure hope he will drop us a note. When he’s in Korea he’s 15 hours ahead of us, but I’m not sure what time it’s in Rome right now. It’ll be a great adventure for him. He sent some more pictures of his class dressed up for Christmas and I’ll have to add them to a later post.
Our past couple of days have been filled with keeping busy in the kitchen, going to Christmas parties, and we were even able to fit in a Birthday party last night. Tonight is our Christmas mass and then some of my family is coming over for some soup and sandwiches. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in everything, but even though one of my lights burnt out on our garland outside – I don’t think it’s the end of the world and I’m betting no one else will think that either!