It wasn't ALL Bah Humbug

So what DID I enjoy about Christmas? Right now I can think of 3 things.

1.) Seeing my pretty 7 year old niece all dressed up in her Christmas dress and sitting on Santa's lap, telling him just one thing that she wanted him to bring her [and if he brought anything more, she wanted it to be a surprise]. And yes, Aunt Denise did take pictures.

2.) Being with/Watching my Mom at our family gathering. She is pretty far gone with her dementia and related health issues, is wheel-chair bound, needs to be fed, she sleeps lots and lots, etc. And in spite of her having a few rough days before Friday's event, she was a trooper that afternoon. She was awake and very alert for the entire time [which surprised us], she smiled like she recognized at least some of the group, she occasionally even laughed [more like a chuckle], and she did try and do some chatting, too, when the various individuals would come over and sit with her [though much of what she says we can't understand]. But it did appear that she had a wonderful time and that was great. Especially after a couple weeks ago after a rough stretch, my dad had said that he wasn't sure if she would even last the night]. So even if she DOES go soon, we're glad she had this Christmas with us.

3.) Ok, I hope you're not too tired yet of hearing about my artist trading cards. If you are, then bear with me for just a couple minutes. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, I was able to get some folks from my ATC [yahoo] groups to swap some holiday cards with me. And it's been awesome getting these cards back in the mail. There's so much divirsity out there, people of all ages and around the world creating these miniature 'canvas's' to create something of themselves. I bet I've gotten close to 30 holiday ATCs through this swap [and thus, I sent that many out]. I also had some extras, so I randomly picked some names/addresses from one of the group's RAK list [Random Acts of Kindness--where we sign up if we're willing to send and/or recieve these RAKs. It's different from a regular swap in that the recipient is not required to send one back, though many of them do.] So I sent a few out to other countries as well as to maybe 6-8 people here in the US. As time goes on, I plan on sending out more RAKs. I received a couple a few months ago and it's always such a nice surprise [and one of them sent me 7 cards; how cool was that??]

Ok, so if any of you want to post something in the comments here about one of your favorite holiday events, please do so!