Wednesday, Dec. 15

Slept late and got up around 8 a.m, then did a treadmill session and resistance exercises. Once I was ready for the day, Hubbie and I delivered gift baskets...first to an Extension Homemaker friend who delivered a jar of her homemade jelly to us a few days ago.

This lady works at a bookstore, which is across the street from a cafe' that Mother and I want to try. So Hubbie popped over to the cafe' to buy a gift certificate to use as a 12-days-of-Christmas gift for Mother. So far, she has received a musical Christmas card, an Andy Williams Christmas music CD, a large can of her favorite hairspray from a beauty supplies store, and a jar of lemon curd.

From there, we delivered a basket to the hairdressers. Here, we met a couple of our friends. They had purchased two tall, skinny, wooden Christmas trees with lights to use as a gift for their son and daughter-in-law. But the trees wouldn't fit in their car, so we offered to put them in our van and take them to their house.

I know...it seems odd that the beauty shop would be selling crafts, but they frequently let folks sell things out of their shop. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a big bag of peanut brittle there to use as a Christmas gift for Hubbie.

While we were at the beauty shop, I bought a gift certificate for a haircut for Mother...another 12-days-of-Christmas gift.

Before we delivered the wooden trees, we stopped by the Caring Hands office to drop off the third gift basket.

Then we returned home for a lunch of leftovers. Right after lunch, we struck out again, this time in search of inexpensive gifts for six great-grandchildren, who will be visiting with other family the day after Christmas. We usually just send money gifts to families, but when kids are going to be here, we feel we need to provide token gifts for them as well as the adults, since we know they'll be bringing gifts for us.

We managed to find $5 board and card games for the younger kids, and I'll search tomorrow for an inexpensive scarf for the teen girl.

After stopping by a couple of grocery stores, we returned home. Mother had prepared a pot of beans with ham, along with an oven potato dish, and turnip greens for supper, so I mixed up cornbread batter for the oven.

The meal was really good and very satisfying. Mother went home afterward, and I spent time uploading photos to a one-hour service, writing letters to include in Christmas cards, and filling out Christmas cards.

While I wrote Christmas cards, Hubbie and I watched our favorite college basketball team play to a win.