I can't believe Christmas has come and gone already.  It was a whirlwind - December was a blur - and I lost interest in the blogging - so my apologies for not posting more entries.

We hosted our first party on December 6.  A club in which we belong was needing a place to hold their annual Christmas party.  I volunteered before I knew the date they were planning.  Talk about a rush to get the house decorated.  I got done in a week what usually takes three weeks, but that is all I did during that week.  I took off work that entire week to decorate.  It turned out nice, I think, but it was more a job than fun...

We spent Chistmas Eve with my family in Perryville.  Mom was off work that day, so it was great to spend the time with them.  We spent Christmas Day and most of the following day with Dennis' family in Chaffee.  On the way back to St Louis, we stopped and visited some more with my family.  As much as we love them and enjoy spending time with them, it's always nice to get home and sleep in your own bed...

I wanted some real trees and greenery this year, so I cut down three cedar trees at Grandpa's farm.  We didn't tie them down, and the wind blew one (the prettiest one) out of the back of the truck on the way home.  We didn't know it until we stopped to fill up on gas.  I checked the news later to make sure no one crashed on the interstate from hitting a cedar tree.  Luckily, it must have landed away from the road...

The two real trees did look great (I didn't get pics of them while they were up), but they wouldn't drink water and dried out quickly.  We had decorated them the old shiny brite and antique ornaments, so it really looked like an old time Christmas tree.  Last week the branches started giving away and the ornaments began falling off the tree.  Every so often we would hear a crash, and we'd have to sweep up the remains of an ornament.  After several fell off, we took down the trees and replaced with artificial ones.  The new trees look nice, but don't smell nearly as good...

Our regular Holiday party is this Saturday.  We are anticipating 150+ guests over the course of the night.  I can't wait! 

We decided last year there was just too much going on to host it before Christmas.  Some nights we have three parties to attend ourselves, and there just is not a night free that someone else wasn't having a party.  Everyone's exhausted.  So after Christmas and New Years everyone can relax and have a good time at our party, and not have to worry about getting to the next one.  Plus it gives me more time to decorate.  It also extends our Christmas season.  When we used to have our party before Christmas, after Christmas day it was all over.  I was depressed.  Now I can look forward to another celebration after Christmas and New Year's Day.  So starting this Sunday, I'll begin the post-party clean-up and begin taking everything down.

Following are some pics of our home decorated for Christmas:

Here's wishing everyone a wonderful 2009!

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