Spreading good cheer

Now that I am retired I can just take off and wander where ever my heart desires or my financial resources will let me go.  This past Thursday I headed to Grand Rapids.  Thursday night Jessica, Eva, a friend from Jessica's work and I met and did a little 'Shop Hopping" through the downtown neighborhoods of Grand Rapids.  It was fun.  Lots of people were out enjoying the good weather.  We saw many creative window and shop displays and I enjoyed the company. 

 Friday Eva and I did a little Christmas shopping in the larger stores.  We managed to put a bit of a dent in Eva's Christmas list and take advantage of the discount coupons that we had collected.  It was an attempt to NOT pay full price for anything.  We did a good job as you can see from all the shopping bags. 

 Saturday was Christmas tree shopping day.  Jessica and Doug met us early and they looked around for quite a while before settling on their trees.  I don't think that this tree was the final tree because I didn't stay out in the rain for the final decision.  Both Eva and Jessica went home with beautiful trees though. 
Saturday evening Eva and I continued to work on her decorating.  We put up her tree (I guess I didn't put pictures up here but I did send them out to many of you via text messaging)  We managed to get quite a bit done.  I decorated the little fake tree from the farm with the OLD ornaments that we had from there.  It still looks pretty good.  Eva put out her collections on her bookshelves and around the house and then we worked together to put the lights on her real tree.  We finished just in time to settle down and watch 'It's a Wonderful Life' on the TV, skipping back at commercial time to check on the score of the Michigan State game. :( The two of us accomplished quite a bit in a couple of days. 

 Sunday morning I drove over to Coleman for the Lewis Family Christmas gathering.  I also did my 'good daughter' task of putting a winter wreath on the grave. 

 There was a small turnout at the family gathering.  Most of the older generation were there except for Uncle Elmer and  Aunt Mary.  I don't think that Uncle Elmer gets out very often.  Aunt Ruth is the 'reigning' elder of the group. 

 Leo joined me as my date.  He is talking to Leon Lewis, one of Dad's cousins.  Leon stopped in to see people. 

 Two cousins, Greta and Jack.

 Denny became a Grandpa for the first time 5 weeks ago so the new baby was the 'star' of the show for a while. 

 Aunt Florence looked great as usual.  We had a nice chat.

Jim and I had a little political discussion.  Not too many democrats at the gathering so we had to talk politics a little. 

It was a busy but fun weekend.  I did find out that the young couple that bought our farm just had a little baby girl 2 weeks ago.  It is nice to know that there is a new baby in that house. 

I arrived home to our Christmas tree shining as I drove up the hill.  Bud has become patriotic again and the lights are red, white and blue.  He did this the year after 9/11 and it seemed like a fairly nice thing to do but I really don't like the combination, especially since he bought one string of red, one string of white, and a third string of blue and they are like stripes up the tree.  I felt bad telling him that I really don't like the look and want to change it, especially since he said that he invested in LED lights and was hoping to keep them for several years.  I couldn't tolerate that look for 3-4 years.  SO, like the good man that he is, he is going to buy a string of green lights and add to the mix and mix up the lights so they aren't in stripes.  I felt really terrible because he had gone to so much trouble but to me a Christmas tree should say Christmas and nothing else.  We have enough other times to express our feelings about our flag and our country, I just want Christmas to say Christmas, not make a statement.

I hope you had a great weekend and you are getting into the Christmas spirit.