Tuesday, December 15, 2015

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

It's hard to get in the Christmas spirit when the temperatures have tipped into the 90's this week.  We are experiencing unusually warm weather for the middle of December.  In fact, we have broken the record for the highest high and highest low for the last couple days.  It is definitely shorts weather in the Rio Grande Valley, and we've been swimming several times.

But we did get into the swing of Christmas enough to decorate the motor home.  We saved a small plastic tub of our favorite Christmas decorations that we thought would travel well.  Those have been packed away for the last eleven months, taking up precious cargo space for something used for such little time!  We thought about buying a small live tree to decorate with our saved Christmas decorations.  But Denisa's Mother had a ceramic tree that she wasn't using this year.  So we adopted it for the season, and it's now glowing on our buffet by the table.

Denisa's aunt made this tree five decades ago.  Denisa remembers setting it up as a child, being careful that the colored pegs on each branch were arranged so that like colors weren't touching.  She remembers that each year the number of pegs seemed to decrease, so it was a good thing that her Mother had purchased a new bag of pegs.  The orange and yellow lights, and pink and purple lights, look very similar in the picture above.  But Denisa is proud to say that she hasn't lost her ability of making sure that the same colors are not on adjacent branches.

The ornaments that we had planned to hang on a Christmas tree, are now hanging from knobs all over the motor home instead.  There's also a nativity set on the dash, some red and green runners on the chairs, and a Christmas door mat outside.  It doesn't take too many decorations when your living space is only 35 feet long.

Denisa had hoped to get the Christmas cards in the mail early this year, alerting all of the people we exchange cards with of our new address.  But the planned family picture didn't happen when the Thanksgiving ice storm made it impossible for our family to all be at the same place at the same time.  So we opted for a picture taken the only time the five of us were together--way back in May when Luke graduated from medical school.  

Those cards won't be back from the printer until next week, so it looks like our "early" Christmas cards might not even arrive in mailboxes until the week of Christmas!

In keeping with the Christmas theme, Mark is still growing his set of Santa whiskers.  He actually shaved off the very gray sideburns, leaving only the kind-of-gray goatee.  Denisa likes this version of his no-shave November facial hair better.


Besides our regular events, we have attended a Christmas pageant at a local church, a high-school show choir Christmas program, and a Christmas party at the RV Resort.  The entertainment for the Trim-a-Tree party at the resort was the park's "Kitchen Band." In case you are not cultured enough to have experienced a kitchen band, it's where the musicians dress up in silly costumes and play various instruments straight from the kitchen. 
 
Here's a picture of Denisa's Mom (in the white blouse) playing the tea pot.  Yes, the woman on the far right is playing a decorated bed pan.  So I guess it would be categorized as a pea pot.

Santa made a surprise visit to the party, complaining that his suit was certainly warm here in Mission, Texas.  So even though it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, the temperature doesn't feel like Christmas at all.

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