Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We had such a sweet, wonderful holiday, full of family and friends who are near and dear to us, so it was terrific! You can NEVER get too much LOVE, but one thing we did get too much of was food-food-food. We always over-estimate how much we will need to feed the crowd, and this year was no exception–so we are finding creative ways to use the excess so it won’t be wasted.

We do have some delicious turkey that I will be sorry to finish off, though! Jim injected a 14 lb. turkey with some Cajun spices and butter, and it was the best turkey I’ve ever eaten. Extremely moist and flavorful, but it didn’t have a Cajun taste, not spicy or anything. Just yummy. I highly recommend investing in a digital meat thermometer. I have held off for years, maybe out of stinginess, but no matter, I finally bought one, and I am so glad I did. Absolutely worth every dime! We’ve now baked 4 turkeys and several hams using it and all have turned out perfect. Buy one yourself and you will be so glad you did. Ours was at Walmart and I think it was only $14 or so. It actually has a wire connecting the temperature probe to the digital readout, which you keep outside the oven, of course. So you don’t have to open the oven to read the temp, nor do you have to contend with peering through a greasy (oops!) oven door window to read a thermometer inside the oven. And, it has an alarm that sounds off when it reaches the temperature you have set for ‘finish’. Yum. I wish everything I cooked was as easy as these meats were!!!

We didn’t get a white Christmas, but in Oklahoma you can hope for it, but shouldn’t expect it! The weather actually was great, and that was a blessing as we did have a lot of elderly relatives in wheelchairs and all, and good weather is much easier for them to tolerate.

Don’s father had to go to the hospital the day after Christmas–pneumonia. He is still there, but we hope he will be able to leave in the next few days. It has been rather hectic keeping up with everyone, including the extra relatives and grandchildren here over the holidays. And, we have some December birthdays yet to celebrate, so the fun continues!!

One sad thing, though. Thieves made off with one of our sons’ shopping cart full of Christmas presents. He lives in Phoenix, and had parked the cart to put one of his little ones into his car seat. When he finished and returned to unpack the cart, it was gone. This was in a ToysRUs parking lot, with lots of other people around, but no one saw it happen, and he lost a lot of the things they had purchased for the kids’ Christmas. Maybe the people who took it needed it more than he did…..

Needless to say, I haven’t been able to work on my digi stuff at all, and I am missing it. And, we will be needing to change the Christmas motif on the site once the holidays are past. Lots to do! And, there are Bowl games to be watched New Year’s Day! Yea! We love football!!

So, there is still a lot of life left in 2006!!!