Monday, December 22

The first day of winter yesterday ended with temps dropping to 10 degrees overnight, the coldest we've had in a couple of years this early in the season. We made sure there was heat on in the camper and the sun room, and Hubbie placed a light in the well house. Even though crucial water pipes are wrapped in electrical insulation, Hubbie still let the faucets drip in the downstairs bathroom, which is near an outside wall, just to be on the safe side. Thanks to these precautions, we had no frozen pipes this morning.

The central heat kicked on frequently through the night, so we were toasty, too, and the house was warm when we got up at 7:30 a.m.

I started the day, as usual, with a treadmill session and exercises with weights. Once I was ready for the day, Mother came over to work on the jigsaw puzzle we started yesterday, and I headed for the kitchen to do some baking.

I made a loaf of lemon bread as Mother's 11th day of Christmas gift. And then I baked a rum cake for Hubbie. While I made these goodies, I watched Christmas movies...an animated feature, "The Polar Express," and "Mrs. Claus," a musical starring Angela Landsbury.

After lunch, Hubbie moved the card table with the jigsaw puzzle into the den, so Mother could join me in watching a musical version of "Scrooge," starring Albert Finney, and "The Nutcracker," starring Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Then we watched The Raleigh Ringers, a hand bell ensemble from Raleigh, North Carolina, perform Christmas music. I recorded the concert on DVR from the public channel earlier this week. We saw this group perform live at a college in another town back in the summer and really enjoyed them. I bought their Christmas CD at that time, and we listened to it on one of our recent trips to another town.

The concert ended around supper time, when we sat down to chicken noodle soup and light biscuits with honey.

After supper, Hubbie air popped popcorn so I could make a batch of baked fruited popcorn for his daughter, who plans to visit sometime this week. Earlier today, he broke pecans and cut up candied cherries for the recipe.

I received a very nice Christmas gift today. The director of an arts council in the southern part of our state sent me a book of student generated poems, stories, plays and photography. The kids who created these works were students of various artists-in-education, including me. It's a thrill to see photos by students I taught illustrating such a nice book. I'm anxious to find time to sit down and read it.