Isn't it amazing how time seems to move at a faster pace as we get older. I didn't realize how many years have passed since I added to this blog.
As a favor to one of my daughter's, I will add to my story as much as possible as I remember it. And, since I have now added a great grandson and great granddaughter to my family, maybe I need to finish my history.
It is now Christmas day 2015 and looking back there are only few Christmas' that stand out. Some when I was a child, but mostly those when I was an adult and a mother.
Christmas, for many reasons, was never a holiday I looked forward to. I loved the decorating of our tree with the real glass icicles and the mirror ornaments I always loved. And the tinsel which I had the patience, even as a child, to put on one strand at a time. I guess that's why I have the patience to cross stitch.
We always went to the Christmas Eve church services even before I sang in the choir with my sister and my parents. I always loved doing this (along with the sunrise service on Easter Sunday). I still remember some of the hymns we sang, 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring' and of course, 'O Holy Night' with my sister & I as the soloists. My sister Joyce & I had very similar voices so it really sounded like one. And always when we got home, we opened gifts, all but out stockings which were still empty.
Christmas stockings were the best.........we could always count on an orange, apple, banana, nuts, usually a Lifesaver books of flavors, new toothbrush, sometimes, underwear and little items pertaining just to each of us.
The first year I remember Christmas was the year I received my boot ice skates, the one gift I really wanted. I also got a black stuffed skootchy dog I had been eyeing for months.
We always had a Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog that we would pour over for months before Christmas. Only once did I get something I wanted from that catalog. I was seven and got a doll with saran hair that you could wash & curl. I still have that doll, even though my daughter Tia calls it evil and creepy.
There was the first Christmas with my future husband Jim and the Christmas when he bought me my diamond watch, the many Christmas' with our daughters (they always loved their stockings best too!); the last Christmas in our house in La Mirada before we took to the road and the last Christmas I spent with Jim.
Many memories, good, bad, happy, silly, sad and poignant.
Kinda' life in a nutshell.
