We spent Christmas eve with youngest daughter and family. She is recovering from shoulder surgery and her adopted teen daughter made pizza for everyone – yummo! Thanks, Ms. F.

Hubbymoose had to work from 11 p.m. Christmas Eve until 10 a.m. Christmas Day, so he and I left the festivities a bit earlier than others so he could get in a few more hours of zzzzzs before heading in.

As you can imagine, he was beat when he got home Christmas mornings. After breakfast he headed off to bed while I puttered around quietly readying the evening meal for older daughter and her brood.

Presents were exchanged – and much love was put into the items given. We are blessed beyond words with our loved ones.

The highlight of Christmas each year is the requisite “Amazing Shrinking Gramma” pictures. All but the very youngest are not taller than I – or very close to being taller than I. Next year? I think all but the two youngest will be “towering” above me. Enjoy:

Click for larger view:

first of all – scuse the hat hair. I live in Alaska, you know.

Left to right in the first picture: D-Bug, me, TAT, with K-Bug and Bugget in front of us. Now, D-Bug LOOKS like he is taller than I am here – but he still has about 1/2 an inch – and, yes, I WILL take that half, thank you very much.

In the second picture – that humongo person next to me? My first-born grand”baby” boy, McDonster! And, yes, he IS that much taller than I. On the other side are his sisters, the Pup and Riah. Yes, Riah is taller also – with the Pup closely behind.

Then he asked me to fake swing at him – that’s a swing and a miss, Gramma. LOL Funny man that one, funny man.

It starts just as soon as we can take the little ones away from mama for a few hours – long enough so they don’t want to nurse – and when they can eat solid foods. ‘course . . . that is sort of a moot point now that the youngest is almost five years old! (ack! where DOES the time go?)

This week we got to take 12 year old D for his trip – it has had to be put off for a few weeks because either we were gone or he was gone/busy, etc. But THIS week it was his turn.

D had his birthday in November, so we were also going to let him pick out a book he wanted – then we found out he had all of his birthday money, too . . . so it was off to the independent book store we went.

The owner loves it that we would rather shop for books with these kiddos than for toys – she loves it when we BUY books for Christmas instead of toys, too.

After many books were chosen and paid for . . . it was time for dinner. We decided on a Chinese restaurant nearby for something different – it is not something we can do every week – the tab was WAY more than we are used to spending for lunch/dinner with the grands . . . but this was a special treat for D.

Thus the challenge . . .

KunPao Chicken . . . complete with peppers. Paw-Paw said “be careful, the peppers are REALLY hot, so don’t bite into one.”

CHALLENGE!

You could just see the wheels turning in D’s head . . . (internal conversation) “Paw-Paw’s a wimp. I can eat ‘em. I’ll show him!”

He reached out, took a pepper and put the whole thing into his mouth and began to chew. “It’s not so hot!” he declared.

And, then we watched as he visibly grew taller in his seat . . . his face turned red the more he chewed . . . he began to rock in his seat . . . he took a drink of his root beer (he had told us before dinner that root beer cut the HOT of any pepper – heh) – rocked some more and then sat taller and taller and taller still. I watched as tears began to roll down his face – then he held his ears (later telling us that they hurt from the inside – until he put one of the peppered fingers into an ear to stop it hurting – and then it hurt from the outside, too!)

The waitress heard us chuckling, came over, took one look and left saying over her shoulder “I’ll get something to help.” She came back with orange slices telling D that chewing them would help cut the hot.

“I told you not to take one,” Paw-Paw said. “Did you think that I was just a wuss?”

D nodded his head and then asked to be excused to get tissues from the bathroom to blow his now running nose.

Poor kid!

He was warned.

He thought he could outsmart/out pepper his grandpa. LOL

Everytime we tell the story (to others and each other) we just start chuckling and then LAUGHING and soon the tears are rolling down OUR cheeks, too.

Grandkids . . . you gotta love ‘em. They are what makes having kids worth it all!

This is crocheted (here’s the pattern at Mother Fury’s request – anything for you, Mom!) – I’ve also been doing quite a bit of knitting – working on some dish cloths now for a swap on one of the groups over on Ravelry. I’ll show pictures of the dishcloths before I send them off to my swap partners. Those haven’t been chosen yet.

451 Press is having some overload issues – so, the knitting blog hasn’t been updated in over a week. They are working on that – installing new equipment, etc. Whoot! Thanks, 451!

And, the grandkiddos just keep on getting bigger – took the oldest out for dinner Sunday evening. He missed his “shopping day” the previous week because he was (gaso!) working! So, we took the youngest of Ladybug’s kiddos for HIS day – and took the Boy this week.

Mortified him in the checkout line – where we were buying him some ice cream and cookies. He told his Mama all about it – made her laugh at him and threaten to come along the next time to chaperone. He said that wasn’t necessary – because he knew she would just gang up on him WITH us. lol. Yup, I love it.

Busy week ahead at work – the last day of the year was today – fiscal year, of course. So that means I have to not only prepare the monthly report, but the fiscal year report as well. Monthly deadline is the 5th. Annual deadline is the 15th. I hope the rest of my numbers come in tomorrow.

soooooo you all be good now, you hear?

So many times we get caught up in our lives – caught up in the lives of other people – caught up in projects (some good and some not so good – you all know the types) – and we put our hearts and souls into all these things . . . .

. . . . and then they come to an end – or at least the end of our part in them. Such is the Share-A-Square project and the offshoot Bag Project. Yesterday I received the last 5 bags needed (from Japan, no less!) to make up the 70 bags I had promised Shelly I could gather together.

Tomorrow I will box them up and ship them off to Shelly in time for her to take them, along with 140 precious afghans, to the children at Camp Sanguinity. Yes, friends, they are precious – they represent hours of love and work YOU have put into them – and, THAT is precious.

From the bottom of my heart – THANK YOU for helping Shelly reach her goal – thank you for your support in so many ways.

You are each very precious to me!

Here’s a very nice article about the entire project.

Sadly I won’t be able to join Shelly and Sherry and others to deliver the afghans – I had hoped to be able to go along – but, someday I trust and hope that I will get to meet these two dynamic ladies. You’ll all be the first to know when that happens!

Didn’t go anywhere – but did have some much needed down time. I did have to go to work four hours last Wednesday for my CPR training – missed it in January when I had that pesky little heart attack. Other than that – no work for me.

Came home with BIG plans to clean my house and the like – haha! Didn’t happen. Well, I actually got this room straightened a bit – enough that I can at least walk into the room and find my way back out – without having to tie a rope around my waist for safety’s sake.

Hubby and I spent some time with Master TAT a week ago – and TAT and I had that lovely time with Miss Jackie, but other than that I actually kept pretty close to home – taking it easy. It was a much needed break (and, don’t tell anyone, but it is going to be a bit hard to go back to work tomorrow).

Hubby and I decided that I couldn’t let the whole time slip away without at least getting out of town. We thought about running up to Anchorage, but he had some business appointments – so, we thought, how about Seward? It’s closer – so that even if we weren’t able to get a room for Saturday night (and we were not!!! Durned tourists! okay, just kidding) – well, it’s close enough for a day trip that wouldn’t wipe us out completely.

The plan was for us to sleep until we woke up this morning – get breakfast – get coffee – and get on the road. We headed for Seward just about noon. It was a drizzly sort of day, but we did find some sun spots here and there – and we had a lovely time together.

We saw some flora:
that’s an Arctic Rose – stopped alongside Kenai Lake and found a couple of huge bushes – can you see the rain drops? Well, maybe not in this smaller picture, but I hope to get some prints made of the larger shot. By the way – I know of at least one reader who likes to borrow other folks’ pictures. I don’t really mind, but please don’t forget to give credit where credit is due – okay? And it would be nice to ask first. But then, you all knew that.

We saw some fauna – first a shrew hightailed it across in front of our car – it made it safely into the underbrush. We saw a moose on the way home – and we saw a LOT of roadkill – looks like it is a big year for rabbits. (they are cyclical – I can’t remember if they have high years one in seven or one in two – I think it’s one in seven)

We visited the SeaLife Center and saw lots of animals there – harbor seals, and the like.

But on the way back from Lowell Point we saw:

see those two dots????

Here . . .

Sea otters just playing and rolling and eating while a fisherman sat quietly nearby watching them – and while we watched them. So cool!

On looking closer we noticed he did not even have his line in the water – he was so captivated by the otters – and I think he didn’t want to chance getting them tangled up in his line. You see the rushing water next to him? He is sitting on rocks below a spillway I guess you’d call it. Across the road where I am standing is a waterfall – it comes under the road and rushes into Resurrection Bay. His truck was parked nearby – and he walked down onto the rocks where he is sitting.

We also saw some kayakers –

We ate a late lunch/early dinner, walked along the harbor for a bit and then headed home. I took several more pictures in Seward and a couple of shots on the way home – I’ll show you at least the ones from the trip home next time.

I need to get off to bed soon – swimming early tomorrow and then off to work . . .