I found this little countdown truck at Dollar General
I pause in the delivery of my sporadic travelogues to tell you what's been going on.
Every year we all go out the day after Thanksgiving to take Christmas pictures.
This is because we need them for our Christmas cards.
Blue-eyed cousins: Ember Rae and Rhett Gregory
This year, as in most years, the weather cooperated. It was cool but not cold, and we converged upon the Horseshoe on the University of South Carolina campus in downtown Columbia, to do the shoots.
I say shoots because each family gets their photo taken, and then if everyone is present and accounted for, I take a group photo of all of our children and grandchildren together.
Last year Andrew and Brittany weren't able to join us for this, so I was excited to get that shot this year.
We're all lit up in the kitchen
Once the multifaceted mission was accomplished, Stephanie and her family headed home to North Carolina.
The rest of us went back to our house to eat Thanksgiving leftovers.
Then it was Saturday, and on that evening we had hamburgers and hot dogs cooked on the grill and celebrated Ember's third birthday one week early.
Her mother created a barnyard-themed tablescape and decorated a plain white cake with piggies squealing as they slid down a mudslide of Oreo cookie crumbs. Adorable.
My kids' stockings are supersized
Then Ember opened her gifts and was so sweet about looking at each card, and politely saying thank you to each one, for each present.
At the start of the first official week of Christmas, I began the task of choosing our card and getting it ordered.
(To be more accurate, I didn't make a decision right away but at least I began the process.)
In due time, I got them ordered.
I received this little church at a gift exchange many years ago
Once I've made up my mind, I don't like to wait, so I go with CVS same-day pickup.
Then as I prepared to do my mailing (I order 140 Christmas cards; approximately 80 go out through the mail and 60 are distributed at church and amongst neighbors and other local friends), I realized that I was going to need Christmas stickers.
You'd think that would be easy.
But no.
When you come over, you can have your coffee or cocoa in a festive mug
First I went to Hobby Lobby, the mother of all craft stores.
I searched high and low -- even in the sticker aisle -- for Christmas stickers, and came up with nothing.
(To be honest, they may have had something Christmasy in the sticker aisle that would have suited, but it wasn't their week to be half-off so I would not have bought them anyway. But I don't think they had any.)
Stephanie and her family
Finally, in a last-ditch effort to locate what I was convinced surely must be there somewhere, I approached a worker in one of the (many) aisles devoted to the display of Christmas merchandise of every conceivable shape, size, and use.
The employee in question was a frazzled-looking older lady with a mop of gray hair that hung down in her face.
She peered at me from behind large glasses and a considerable quantity of the hair.
I made this mince pie and it did not get eaten. It's in the freezer awaiting Christmas Eve.
I'm just being honest.
She did not smile or even speak, at first, when I said: Hi! with my best pirate smile, and yes it is dazzling.
So I continued: Could you tell me where I might find Christmas stickers? Not the to-from kind that you stick onto a gift, but just regular Christmas stickers like you put on the back of a card?
Cherica and Baby Rhett
The lady hesitated and then said: Everything we have is out.
She gestured in a halfhearted way by waving weakly with one hand, indicating that if the stickers were "out", they would be in the vicinity. Or they could be anywhere.
I said: So you don't specifically know of any Christmas stickers?
Some of the TV room decorations
No, she said.
Thanks! I said.
Defeated, I queued up and bought the few things that were in my cart, and left.
Next stop: Walmart, for groceries. And surely for Christmas stickers.
Brittany and Ember
Except, once I had searched the greeting card and gift wrap and party supplies aisles, as well as the seasonal aisles near that area, and the second seasonal aisle elsewhere in the store at least a half-acre away from those areas, and failed to locate even the suggestion of a Christmas sticker, I decided it was time to ask for help.
I approached a worker who was fiddling with a display of Christmas baking items.
Hi! I said. Could you tell me where I might find Christmas stickers? Not the to-from kind to stick onto a gift, but the kind you put on the back of an envelope containing a Christmas card? I've looked everywhere.
These are some of our presents for the kids and grandkids ... theirs to us and one another will be added
This lady practically glared at me from beneath a Santa hat. She did not smile or encourage me in any way.
All of the Christmas stuff is in the Garden Center, she said.
I hesitated. Well ... except for the Christmas stuff at the front of the store beside the greeting card aisle, and the Christmas stuff crammed into the aisle behind you, I said.
No, she said shaking her head so that the white pompom on the end of her Santa hat bobbed around. Everything is in the Garden Center. If we have Christmas stickers, that's where they'll be.
That's all of them ... so far
Thanks! I said. Lies! I knew then that I was basically on my own in the retail wilderness.
Back to the front of the store I trotted, hooking a right towards the Garden Center (approximately a quarter mile away). Despite odds that were lengthening by the minute, I was feeling hopeful.
Through the doors to the Garden Center I went. It was in fact stuffed with all things Christmas: from fake trees to lights to tinsel to gift wrap to ornaments to wreaths, it was there.
I began searching for Christmas stickers. The gift wrap aisle made the most sense to me, so I started there.
My gnome is all set for the slopes
And they had tons of Christmas stickers! Except, all sixteen million of them said To: followed by From:.
I sighed and located a worker. This lady was actually very nice and smiled at me sweetly when I said: Hi!
I continued: Do you know where I might find Christmas stickers? Not the kind that say to-from but the kind that you plaster onto the back of a Christmas card before you pop it into the mail?
Audrey and Dagny Clare
Her smile, at first so radiant, did not stick to her face.
Oh no, she said. I'm pretty sure that the only kind we have say To: and From:.
But then, in a sincere effort to be helpful: Have you looked up front in all of the Christmas-themed aisles near the greeting cards? With the big Santa on top?
Oh yes, I said. Thoroughly. Twice.
This display adorns the foyer
She shook her head in sympathy. Then I'm pretty sure we don't have any Christmas stickers, she said.
I thanked her again and sighed and turned away. Yes! I had spent at least thirty minutes on my quest in that store, for something as simple as a pack of Christmas stickers.
Call it an hour if you count all the time I spent doing the same thing at Hobby Lobby.
For all in tents and porpoises, I gave up.
Andrew, Brittany, and Ember
That night we had church and on the way home I said to TG: Let's go to Kroger because I need a few things and I bet they will have Christmas stickers there.
Hope springs eternal.
And they did. There were ony two designs and one was Snoopy but since I needed so many, I settled for a theme that had not really been what I was looking for, but was pretty enough and Christmasy enough.
Note to the pirate: Take yes for an answer.
Here's what you'll see when you come to my front door
If I have your address, you got a card with one of these and I hope you didn't throw it away now that you know what I went through.
And yes please do pepper me with suggestions of where I should have looked for Christmas stickers, and how I should have started looking earlier, or perhaps even bought them online in plenty of time for when I needed them.
I have not thought of any of those things, or accused myself of poor judgment in this area, so please do have a go at me.
Rhett was ready to rumble
In other news, last Saturday TG and I traveled to Simpsonville to the Cracker Barrel there (remember, Jeanette?) to have lunch with Henry and my sister Kay and her husband Pierre-Philippe.
Kay had a birthday this week, and I wanted to give them their treat-filled Christmas baskets that I'd made, so it worked out well.
I also took along a small chocolate cake that a (very nice) worker at Kroger ruined by writing my sister's name -- three letters! -- upon said cake in a way so disproportionate and odd-looking that I was truly flabbergasted.
We'll put this pillow at your back when you come to visit me
But I did not say anything except: Thanks!
Bygones. It did not affect the taste of the cake, which was truly fresh and delicious, and which we all enjoyed.
TG and I also got a birthday balloon for my sister and I clipped it to something in the middle of the table at the restaurant. As we were just beginning to drive home after the party, though, I remembered that we had not brought it out of the restaurant with us.
Ember's party had a barnyard theme
I texted Kay: Your balloon! We forgot it! She responded: I never even saw it!
Help me to understand.
Where was it? She texted. Floating above the table, I responded.
My lazy Susan is decorated with various things
Where, for all I know, it floats even now.
TG's philosophy at such times: Let it go. And he is right.
Dagny got sick and had to miss her Christmas program at church last Sunday night. She spent Monday at my house, sleeping most of the time.
She missed her balloon but we ate her cake with the funny-looking writing on top
But she recovered sufficiently to participate in her piano recital on Thursday evening (last night, as I write this), for which she played a simple but effective rendition of Silent Night.
Afterwards I asked her to pose at the piano. The result was a picture that prompted me to caption it when I sent it out later in a group text to Audrey, Erica, Andrew, Stephanie, Chad, Brittany, and TG: At some things she is a beginner but at other things she is not.
We're glowing to have a great time at Christmas
Eight going on eighteen, is all I have to say.
And now we are in the thick of it, with Christmas a mere eight days away.
All of my gift shopping is complete with the exception of a few stocking stuffers that I plan to pick up next week.
Dagny is eight going on eighteen
Everything is wrapped and waiting under the tree.
Before it's all over we will have Melanie's birthday party on the 22nd, followed by first Christmas (the same night but as separate events) with Stepanie's family, one Christmas party (Christmas Eve buffet at Erica's house), second Christmas (with Chad, Erica, Rhett, Audrey, and Dagny on Christmas Day), and third Christmas (with Andrew, Brittany, and Ember on the 29th).
Merry Christmas from TG and me and all the family
Then we'll blink once or twice and it will be 2023.
I plan to enjoy every single last solitary second of it and I hope you do too.
And that is all for now.
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Happy Weekend
