Happy New Year!

Happy New Year friends! I just love a new year, especially when it's an even number! I know, I know, the last even-numbered one was a bit wonky with the pandemic starting and all, but I have confidence that the year will turn out to be a good one!

How were your holidays? Ours were good and fun and the weather on Christmas was super good and warmish! I hate to jinx it, but we've had the best late fall/early winter! And, of course, you know that the cooler temps and low humidity are good friends to my hair -- which is always uppermost in my list of worries -- how's my hair look???

It's been SO wonderful to have Maddie at home for an extended visit as her classes don't start again until January 24! She had a very good semester -- even with an insane amount of work in an English class being taught by a grad student. OY!!! I can't even explain how awful that class was for her and such confusing and WEIRD assignments for an English Comp 102 class. PTL - it's over! Grad students should never teach classes without a real instructor overseeing them. Reviews of her on "rate my professor" are not going to be good.

Miss Maddie turned 20 on December 20! What a fabulous girl! I love her so! We went out to a breakfast place called Good Evans for a birthday lunch!And we had cookies with the Chick-Fil-A logo! LOVE that place! We had a good time out at Philip and Catherine's celebrating on Christmas Eve. It was a "breakfast for dinner" theme. I do love that as not much beats french toast casserole and my famous quiche! The next day we celebrated at home with just Connor and Maddie and had Olive Garden- YUM!

In other big news, the Rickster retired - so that made our December rather busy as we tried to get rid of 25 years worth of stuff out of the office and either shredded, moved to storage or to his home office -- here at home. Good thing no family events coming up as there is no room in the dining room for anything -- just saying -- we should have gotten rid of more stuff. I told him that! :) He has a few cases he will continue to work on. My temporary gig at his office went on for 7 years (after 32 years at my old office), so I must admit I am tired of the law (that's putting it nicely). I'm still in charge of checking phone messages, printing stuff off and other assorted duties. Yes, I am a saint! I would show you a photo of all the stuff - but it would scare you -- yep - it scares me. This is gonna take a while (a long while) to get through. The job never ends!

I also worked as a part-time gift wrapper. I LOVE that job. Such a wonderful group of mostly old ladies. One lady is 86 and has been gift wrapping for 18 years! She said she hopes to make it to 20 years -- hope I can do it that long too. It hasn't been as busy since the pandemic and all, but gets crazy the closer you get to Christmas. One guy brought in 25 gifts to be wrapped! Couple days later, he brought in 20 more! We gift wrappers like to be busy, so we were good with that.

In case you're wondering, I'm just putting in Photos here and there because I've had trouble with formatting the blog and the only way to not have it end up ONE LONG PARAGRAPH is to Insert photos.

Also, our attempt at Christmas photos was a bust. I thought I looked ok -- you know I am getting older -- but the photographer freaked me out when we told me I had a fake smile and needed to try harder. UMMM -- well, that actually made it even more difficult and every photo was awful. Mads and Rickster looked good, of course. Now, I ask you -- is that a fake smile?? Yep I guess that was, but believe me, the photos she took were bad -- very bad. <

That's my report for now. Hope you are enjoying a warmish January. Let's get this month over with and on to Spring!!