Recovering From Christmas

Well, the dust has almost settled from all the activities surrounding Christmas. The candles have been removed from the front windows, but they are still awaiting to be moved out to the attic for proper storage. Our tiny Christmas tree has to be covered and placed out in the attic as well. Actually, The Little Woman had this tree made for Hubby's Mom while she was in the nursing home. I'm not saying we are ready for the nursing home! We are just recycling the tree. Have you ever noticed the older you get the smaller the Christmas tree seems to get? When we moved into this house 30 years ago (12/22/1976), our first Christmas tree was huge. At that time we could accommodate a huge tree, because we didn't have any furniture in the den. Now, we are wall-to-wall furniture and there really isn't a place for a tree without rearranging the room. We aren't going to start rearranging the furniture after 30 years. Everything is pretty much the same, "some things never change", to quote a dear friend.







I've included a photo of "Tidewater". That's the name of our house, taken from the Tidewater area of Virginia. We love Colonial Williamsburg, so when we built our house we thought it appropriate to name it for the area of Virginia we so love and enjoy.

We are currently working on moving our garden spot. As a result, we have had 14 skinny Virginia pines and one huge pine removed and the stumps ground. This has left us with all these mounds of dirt and holes that have to be filled. Our friend David M. is going to bring over his great tractor and push all the dirt where it needs to be, then all the hard work begins. We have to prepare the soil before planting in the spring, but we want to turn all the bugs and worms up so they will, hopefully find other ground. All the hard work is worth the wonderful yield. Take a look a some of the greenbeans from last year's garden. We have Hubby weighing the pick of the day. We only harvested about 88 lbs. of greenbeans last year. We didn't have enough rain.

Until next time...

Christmas Eve Service

Our home has been like Grand Central Station since last Thursday (December 22).

We have had two sets of overnight guests, our Aussie friends (Hubby was helping Jono with a Christmas gift for his dad, David), and various friends dropping by during the holidays.

Saturday evening was the annual gathering of The Little Woman's entire family (we are small in number compared to some families) for their Christmas. We also invited our next door neighbors. As a result of the above, The Little Woman cooked for two days in preparation, but it was good. The great thing about all this are the leftovers.

Our menu consisted of the following:

Smoked Turkey (on the Big Green Egg)
Smoked Ham (on the Big Green Egg) these two items were to die for!
Dressing (cornbread, of course)
Seven-Layer Salad
Squash Casserole
Greenbeans
Pickled Greenbeans (a southern thing--North Carolina, specifically, my grandmother was from western North Carolina)
Orange Salad
Tea Cakes (made this year by our neice, Lizzie, but she has mastered our grandmother's touch)
Pumpkin Pie
Chocolate Mice
Seay's Chocolate Candy (from our cousin in California)

NOTE ON SOUTHERN CORNBREAD: Have you even been into a restaurant, ordered cornbread and when you bite into it, it's like corn cake, YUK!!!!!!! Sweet cornbread? NO WAY! That is a product from north of the Mason-Dixon line for sure. Don't let anyone fool you, not even some like-to-be southerns, REAL southern cornbread never, ever, never, has sugar in it and not out of a box!!!! If you want sweet cornbread you might as well have it for dessert.

Christmas Eve we attended our regular morning church service at New Hope Baptist Church, Fayetteville, GA. Our pastor delivered a great sermon about the shepards' attitude towards the birth of Jesus. Pastor Rhys has such a great sense of humor--he's English, you know (Brighton, England). We are still learning some of his terms, even after being here a year. We love Pastor Rhys and his family! They are true servants of the Lord.

The highlight of the day was the candlelight service last evening. We were joined by two special friends, John, who Hubby worked with for 30+ years, and Kenny, one of our adopted sons. The church was full. Pastor Rhys had a short message on fear and how the Lord says, "not to fear". Then we had communion, which is always a special time and the lighting of the candles. Pastor Rhys talked about Jesus being the light in a dark world. It was beautiful. Then we sang "Silent Night".

Today, Christmas Day, we are going to have breakfast with our family. Our neice, Lizzie, was just married (to a fine young man, I might add) this past May, so this is her first Christmas in her own home, and is hosting the affair.

We must be getting ready for the journey over to Covington, GA to Lizzie's for breakfast.

Merry Christmas to you all.

The Retired Going Electronic!

December 22, 2006

Well the "elderly" have gone mod! This is our first attempt at doing a blog with the help of our Aussie friend, Michael.

We met Michael's parent at church. They have just moved here (July 2006) from Brisbane, QLD, Australia. They are fine people and we are learning a lot about their homeland and how to speak Aussie. It's a hard language, but so is Southern! We are teaching them how to speak Southern.