New Year's Eve 2024

Happy New Year!  Tonight we got to use those crackers that we've been holding on to, and we each pulled on our ends and all three of us won our pulling contests, the loud crack snapping and the package opening up to reveal the goodies inside.  I like this tradition.  I think it usually is for Christmas, but with Christmas so full of things to do, I like opening the crackers on New Year's Eve.  Anyway, inside are the paper crowns, which you can see we put on our heads immediately.  And there were those small prizes.  One was a metal puzzle that Maddie was able to solve - I wasn't able to do it before the new year, but I'll try again tomorrow!  I got some marbles, so of course Maddie told me not to lose my marbles.  Mom got a small ring game, and we all got the little jokes inside like this one, perhaps my favorite:

Q:  Why did the doughnut seller quit his job.

A:  He was tired of the hole business.

Anyway, we had a good night tonight.  To help the time go by, we actually bought a digital copy of the new movie "Wicked," which actually premiered online today.  Why not?  We planned on seeing this in theaters tomorrow, but decided to watch it tonight.  It was a better movie than I expected.  Of course, we love all things Oz, so there was an immediate connection there.  We loved the little nods to the lore scattered throughout the movie.  I'm not sure how things will turn out, as we don't know the entire story.  I mean, we know what happens at the end of the "Wizard of Oz," and in fact that much is largely implied at the beginning of this movie.  However, all is not as it appears in this movie as well, and we're well aware of that.

We also checked out the latest episode of "Skeleton Crew" tonight, and that was also pretty good.  There was this one bit with these small robot creatures that seemed to take a section straight from a RL Stine short story, and that wasn't a bad thing.  It's been a fun series though, a welcome return to fun in a Star Wars series.  I think that's one thing we've missed in the new Star Wars series:  fun.

Anyway, after watching all that, it was getting close to midnight.  This used to take so long when I was much younger, that huge wait until midnight.  I mean, could I possibly make it? 

Look what happened while we were watching the movie!  The amaryllis is ready to bloom, and might actually open up tomorrow!

And Maddie was on her island in "Animal Crossing" again, watching her friends there count down the new year.

We had some different festive hats too, these we found in the basement this morning with a few other small decorations and noise makers.  So we had Animal Crossing counting down the time, but we also had a channel on social media where a couple were broadcasting live from Main Street at the Magic Kingdom, where there was a massive fireworks display, and then Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy all started panicking, because it was time for the countdown!  Together we joined everyone at the parks, all of us together counting 10... 9... 8...7...6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...!

Happy New Year!  It's 2025!  The fireworks went off, and we gave kisses and hugs and wishes to each other for happy new year.  We got our our sparkling grape juice bottle, a tradition for New Year's Eve, especially in those little celebration glasses.

Happy New Year!  Here we are in 2025, and it's going to be a great year.  Wow, it's suddenly January!  Wait, what?  But before we go forward, let's look back earlier in December... or at least earlier today.

That's right, it's day seven of Hanukkah.  We lit our candle tonight as we read from our devotional.  We were all cracking up again at the attempt to light the candle as we read the scripture, but Maddie got the Shamash lit, and then the other candles as well.  The menorah is looking good!

And so is this menorah too!  Maddie and I did a craft today, and it took quite some time to get done, but we had these metal frames of Hanukkah shapes.  Maddie had the menorah, and I had a dreidel shape.  We had all these small colored bits of plastic, and the two of us used tweezers to place the bits of plastic into the metal frames, which of course were laid out on a sheet of tin foil on a baking pan.  After the long, long process of painstakingly putting each bit of plastic in the right place, we placed the baking pan into an oven, where the plastic would melt into place.

They turned out well!  It took longer than expected, but it was fun, and the end product was really nice!

The rest of our day was actually pretty productive in the basement.  We've got things set up so that the DeSantafication process can start tomorrow, as we start taking things down bit by bit.  But yeah, we were doing a lot of clearing out today.

Maddie closed out the year doing some gaming, and doing a bit of cleaning up herself.  The weather outside was really nice today, and we kept the bird feeders stocked.  We've had a lot of bird visitors on that back deck, always a great source of entertainment.

We closed out 2024 with a relaxing day at home, and together.  It was nice.  This morning we looked back on the entire year on this blog, and as always you marvel at the things that happened all in one year, much of which you forget about over time.  It had some roller coaster moments for sure, but here we are, healthy and happy at the very end of it, and starting out the new year with hopeful optimism.  It's going to be a great 2025.  

Happy New Year!

Paint By Numbers

Maddie was trying the paint-by-numbers kit she got from the family yesterday, and she was actually spending some time on that.  She'd be there with her headphones on, watching some of her favorite online personalities and videos while painting away - she didn't get done, but she got a good ways into it:

It was another quiet day of our staycation.  We spent a lot of time in the basement, cleaning things up and getting things organized and ready for the de-Santafication.  It's always a sad occasion to start bringing the stuff down, and we were glad the neighbors dropped by with some extra chocolates, not only for the chocolates but the company and the shared belief that it's okay to keep the trees up just a little longer.

I had to give an amaryllis update, which you can see above.  It's just about to open up, and might do so on New Year's Day perhaps.  We got it a little later in the season, but at least we got one.  I remember the struggle to find one, and to locate it at Sam's Club like that was pretty great, and also in that unique presentation.  Very cool.  The flower's stem has been rising, rising, and towering at the kitchen table, and now appears ready to bloom.

Hanukkah, Day Six!  This part is funny every night, where I read a passage as Maddie lights the Shamash candle.  But as I'm reading, Maddie stands there for a moment struggling to get the lighter to light at all.  Which is funny because the passage is solemn and reverent, and the whole time there's Maddie clicking and clicking on that lighter and struggling to get the thing lit until we all crack up.  Every.  Single.  Time.  It's hilarious.  But we get the candle lit, and Mom has the candles all in place so that we read the scripture from Deuteronomy as we light each of the daily candles in the correct order.  And then, when lit, we read from the book we picked up at Christmas, the eight-day devotional to go with the lighting of the candles.

I've been still walking on the treadmill this season, and doing so daily - but instead of using the programmed videos on the machine, I've been watching all sorts of Christmas movies and specials, many of which are on VHS.  We have this television downstairs, one with a VHS player in it, and it's been so great to watch some of these videos on VHS.  Many of them you can't find on any other format yet, which is wild.  Anyway, today I was continuing to watch something not related to Christmas at all, the first Star Trek movie, "Star Trek:  The Motion Picture."  This is a loooooong movie.  So much nostalgia though.  I can't believe I remember some of the dialogue from this one.  But for some reason, the thing I remember most are the happy meals from McDonald's that promoted the movie.  My goodness, those were some valuable happy meals at the time.  I don't remember the toys inside, but I remember a board game and the artwork on the happy meals.  I would love to see some of those happy meal boxes again.  From time to time, there have been some really great happy meal collections.  I remember one set where happy meal containers were plastic and shaped like different boats.  I specifically remember my sister and I floating the boats down the river at Pigeon Forge.  Nowadays those boats are pretty pricy if you want to find them online.  I think the ultimate happy meal treasure for me was much later when I was a lot older - it was Inspector Gadget.  Each week there's be a different piece of Inspector Gadget, perhaps a let or a head or the torso or just the hat.  Each piece would do something different, and then of course each piece would connect to the other so that by the end of the collecting, you'd have this larger scale Inspector Gadget.  Yes, I still have that larger Inspector Gadget, folks.  I remember my sister and I going to all these different McDonald's locations over the weeks, making sure we got each one. 

Not related to McDonald's, a similar fast-food collection craze came for me in the 80's, when Hardee's was giving out California Raisin figures.  I have all ten of those still!

Anyway, that took me down memory lane.  That's where I was for a good part of the day anyway.  We were organizing old tapes in the basement, and old audio tapes too.  I have some of those leftover, though not many.  The treadmill is a perfect place to catch all these old VHS movies though.  I found a Garrison Keillor special from 1989, and a VHS tape of Praise in Motion's "The Gift" from 2002.  There are old Disney movies that I've never seen, like "The Garbage Picking Field Goal Kicking Philadelphia Phenomenon."  I don't know if that was ever on DVD, or where you can see that anywhere.  But I found a copy on VHS, and during the playoffs I thought I'd check it out while on the treadmill.  

Mom and I were in the basement a good bit today.  And Maddie was helping out too, as she will be doing during the whole DeSantafication process.  We were bringing tubs up and putting them next to where some of the decorations are set up, making it easy to just pack things up and carry them down.  Also, I'm moving all my binders back to the church, the ones with the old messages and themes.  It might be a while before they all get to the church and set up again, but the office is going through quite a bit of change too - we'll be doing a lot of reorganizing in 2025.

We played some games tonight, including LEGO Marvel.  I opened up the character Fing Fang Foom, which is always fun to say.  And it's a crazy character too, with the ability to turn into this ginormous LEGO dragon.  We were spending time doing little missions here or there, and that was fun.

The movie of the night was "Jumanji:  The Next Level."  It's been a while since we've seen this one, and honestly didn't remember some of the details of it, but we all enjoyed it quite a bit.  I think this means we're going back to the original Jumanji tomorrow night, and maybe even the board game, right?

We closed out the penultimate day of 2024 with reading from "A Christmas Carol" first, which had us at Ebenezer Scrooge's grave, and a vow to honor Christmas.  Tomorrow night we'll wrap up that story.  And of course the other story we're reading still is "Hogfather," which I suspect we'll be still doing somewhere into the first week of January.  More than likely we'll continue in the Discworld after this with another book from that realm - we'll have to decide when we get to that point which book to do next.

Anyway, we said our prayers after that.  And then it was time for some rest.  Only one more day left of 2024!

Christmas is Here Again

Christmas time is here again, at least over at Nana and Ye-Ye's house.  We had a wonderful Christmas time over there this afternoon, eating a hearty meal with family and of course there's the exchanging of gifts too.  

It's really just about being together, listening to Christmas music and talking and catching up and eating gate fudge and Christmas candies and spending time with one another.  Aunt Shain and the boys went down to Claxton, Georgia to get me a tumbler and actual fruitcake from a famous place that makes fruitcake down there - which is hilarious.  And of course they got me actual fruitcake too.  We got Nana and Ye-Ye tickets to the circus again, and there were these electric floating spheres that everyone got too, these toys that you can imagine created all kinds of crazy chaos in the living room.  The white elephant gift exchange was also super fun with some hysterical gifts that had everyone laughing.  The ugly clown was back, as was a copy of "Gone with the Wind," a gift that has been given every single Christmas since 1996 or so.  It was a fun year, and everyone had a good time, although there were illnesses here or there.  Nana has been sick, which is why Christmas was postponed to this date to begin with.  She's getting better, but also Hannah is under the weather, as was I a bit.  We'll be fine though - it was just good to be with each other.  The desserts were delicious, and the meal was huge and quite the feast.  It was a very nice Christmas together!

We did some cleaning up the rest of the day, plus some wrapping for the evening's events.  Tonight's movie was "Jumanji:  Welcome to the Jungle," which we just felt like watching again.  I think it was because of the plumbing in the house, this rattling that goes off from time to time that reminds us of the drums from Jumanji.  So yeah, we completely forgot a lot of this movie, and it was fun revisiting.  We'll have to do the other two movies now to close out the year, I think!

We read tonight, and we said our prayers afterwards.  It was an early night though, as all three of us were awake for all the storms coming through in the middle of last night.  There were quite a few tornados in the Southeast, and in fact a lot of trees near Aunt Shain's house came down.  Here, we were spared much of the damage, although it was quite noisy.  The point is, all of us were tired, and after reading, we were able to fall asleep rather quickly!

Frozen Musical

 

We had our tickets today to see "Frozen," pretty much the first time this play is being performed in the Southeast, and of course at the City Springs Theatre.  We had our season tickets for this year, and this was play number two, the first being "The Music Man."  We left early enough to arrive about an hour early, and as far as this photo shoot above goes, that was a good idea - this location had a massive line in about fifteen minutes!  We got our usual snacks and had a seat and waited until the doors opened.

And when they did, we found our seats, those beautiful seats right there at the front of the balcony, dead center.  Yes, these are amazing seats for the production.  We were seated, flipping through our program, ready to watch.  Why, I even had my Olaf socks on!

These socks made an appearance back at Summer Xtreme on stage, so it's only fitting that six months later they're here for the play!

It was a fun afternoon!  It was interesting to see how they extended things in places, making adjustments here or there, and of course adding special effects for Elsa's abilities.  There were so many little girls dressed up as Elsa and Anna, and the atmosphere was fantastic.  We enjoyed the show very much, and of course the musical performances were really great!

Amazingly, we got out of there so fast afterwards.  I mean, wow.  We walked off the balcony and straight out the door and straight to our car and just had such favor getting out of there quickly.  We needed that favor, because the weather was miserable on the way home.  It was the worst kind of weather to drive in, but we made it home without incident, and were grateful for that.

We got home and had a relaxing remaining day.  We ate dinner together, played some games, and continued our clean-up of the house, putting Christmas things away and so on.  We stopped to do our devotional time as well, lighting our next candle on the menorah.  Maddie used the Shamash to light the candles as we read the scriptures, and then we read the devotional as the light came forth from the candles.  It was very nice.

Tonight's programing was another viewing of "The Music Man," the version with Matthew Broderick and Christine Chenoweth from 2003.  Recently we saw "The Music Man" on stage down at Sandy Springs, and so we were interested in seeing this other movie too.  It just wasn't available immediately.

We'd never seen it before, and it was actually a difficult thing to find - but I ordered a copy for Mom on DVD.  We opened up the DVD today, and it was actually unwrapped, unused, and from K-Mart.  That's how long ago this was sitting on a shelf, and finally opened.  Anyway, we really enjoyed the movie - a great version of the classic story, with great music too.  In this version, Marian is welcomed into the girl group that formerly didn't respect her - we saw that in the stage musical too.  For some reason, that isn't shown in the 1962 movie.  There were a few other differences that were smaller, but overall we thought it was a really good production.

But wow, I was tired afterwards.  It was a longer movie, and it was a long day.  Still, we made time to read tonight, and of course we said our prayers too.  I fell asleep quickly, but woke up in the night with a huge storm rolling through the night.  It was loud, but we were kept safe through the night.  

Dreidel Battle

We lit another candle tonight, and afterwards we got into a game of dreidel that had perhaps the greatest comeback in dreidel history.  Maddie literally had nothing left, and Mom had this monumental stack of coins.  I had already been obliterated by the juggernaut of Mom's powerful spins.  And yet, Maddie whittled away at Mom's lead, one spin at a time.  It took about twenty minutes of spins, and amazingly, Maddie came back as Mom kept spinning the dreidel and it kept showing up with the dreaded Shin.  Time and again:  Shin.  Meanwhile, Maddie kept getting winning.  The odds of probability are weird, because there's this sense of momentum that defies probability.  You just know the way things are going and it's not under anyone's control whatsoever, whether you like it or not.  Yep, probability goes out the window at that time, and you get the idea that you're following some sort of weird unwritten script that just can't be explained.  Anyway, Maddie came out triumphant at the end, and it was impossible, and yet there it was!

So today was a quiet day.  We had rain, and we had a lot of clean-up to do with Christmas decorations and reading too - we were enjoying some of the homemade pastries we got for Christmas, and we also read some from our books, including "A Christmas Carol."  We've been enjoying exotic teas, and Maddie and I spent some time playing our LEGO Marvel game still, where Maddie created a superhero that is dressed like a flying Wolverine chicken.  Speaking of Marvel, we've been hooked on this last season of "What If..."  New episodes daily, and we're having fun watching those.

We were reading a good bit today, and were even out to do a little bit of "after-Christmas" shopping.  I got some wrapping paper and tags on sale, and a few other small items, including some needed groceries.  It was a quiet day today though, and that's not a bad thing.  We said our prayers tonight, and got a good night's rest.

Day After Christmas

 Somewhat of a relaxing day, although the registration process for the SAT test was a pain.  But we got through it all, despite the website's best efforts to dissuade us from actually registering.  The last few years, we've traditionally hit the road on this day, heading off on vacation here or there, mostly Pigeon Forge.  This year, we're at home, slowly packing away new gifts and toys, listening to the new vinyl records or checking out books.  Speaking of books, I've been reading that classic edition of "A Christmas Carol" the last few days, reading it out loud.  It's been fantastic fun reading that, as we all know so many of the lines by heart.  

Maddie and I played a game of Super Mario Party at one point, and we set out a new bird feeder too.  The birds have been so numerous out  there, so many of them.  It's a great flurry of activity on the back deck.  Maddie has been using her new Christmas-themed Mad-libs book, getting Mom and I to give random nouns and adjectives until we get a hilarious story that Maddie enjoys reading out loud to us afterwards.

It is the second night of Hanukkah, and so we had Maddie light the candles, using the Shamash and reading scriptures from Deuteronomy, and then the devotional for day two that goes with it.  One gift was a Hanukkah devotional that has eight entries, so we were following along with that.  We'll do the dreidel game eventually, and even a little craft that I picked up some time ago of a stained glass dreidel that you can make.  

Tonight's movie was "Oz, the Great and Powerful," part of a new ongoing "Oz-fest" I think we'll be having this week.  The reason is that we'll likely be going to the theater to see "Wicked" in theaters.  Other than "Moana 2" and "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever," this is the only other movie we are even remotely interested in seeing in theaters.  So yeah, we went to Oz again tonight, and we'll be there again soon with a few of the other movies.  Maddie does not like "Return to Oz" so much!  But I love it, perhaps for different reasons than the other Oz movies, but I still do enjoy it.  Anyway, "Wicked" is on the horizon.

So I've been sick today, though not so much.  But it does make reading the part of DEATH a lot easier in the Hogfather book.  My voice has a lot of bass and scratchiness to it, which adds a good bit more menace to his epic phrase, "HO.  HO.  HO."  We're still reading that story too, which I think we have another week or so left, depending on how the nights go.  We really like this story though.

We had leftover Chinese food for lunch, and of course we're all munching on these sweets left over from Christmas.  I don't think we went anywhere today.  At all.  I mean, I went to the mail box.  And took the trash out.  But that's about the maximum distance covered today, and that's okay.  Maddie's been playing games, and Mom's been testing out her new headphones - I got her some BOSE headphones, and those are nice.  She sat a good bit today, actually doing bills as she listened to her favorite programing using the headphones.  All the decorations are still up and lit, and we're just chill today.

Okay, it's time for bed.  I'm sleeping downstairs tonight, as I'm not wanting anyone else to get this little virus.  It's not too bad at the moment.  We said our prayers before bed, this after all the reading.  It was a good day today, relaxed and pretty quiet.  Tomorrow will hopefully be a bit like that too.

Christmas 2024

Christmas time is here again, and as you can see, we got our yearly visit as there are plenty of presents beneath the tree and around the fireplace.  The cookies were attacked last night, and the milk all gone too. Christmas is here again!

It came a little earlier than usual this year, mainly because of one joke we were making yesterday.  I was not necessarily complaining, but rather comparing Maddie to most kids growing up at Christmas time.  Mom and I were explaining to Maddie that in all her years - ever since the beginning - she's never gotten up early on Christmas morning so that she could race down the stairs and open those presents.  She's never once ran into our room and woke us up yelling, "It's Christmas!"  That's right, she usually sleeps in!  So all these years, we all get to sleep in somewhat - somewhat - and just have a nice slow-to-rise sort of morning.

But this morning, she took our words to heart yesterday and actually set her alarm for 6am.  Yes, at 6am while all was still dark outside, Maddie came running in full speed and woke the two of us up in bed yelling, "It's Christmas!  It's Christmas!"  And we were laughing because it was all so unlike her, and before anyone could take any of this seriously, she smiled and said, "Okay, goodnight!"  And went back down the hall to go back to sleep for a bit.

But don't worry.  Christmas did indeed come of course.  We enjoyed some of the gluten free cakes with icing that Mom picked up yesterday, and we made ourselves some special coffee as well, all while Christmas music played and Maddie did the role of head elf, distributing the gifts to where each of us can open them up one at a time.

Now some places everyone opens the gifts all at once, and this is no criticism of that.  In this house, we like to open them up one at a time and watch everyone's reactions as they get this gift or that.  And the name tags are a big deal here, as sometimes it takes longer to figure out a name that a particular gift is from, something that gives a slight hint as to what the gift inside may be.  

For example, this gift is from East Forsyth High School, or other gifts are from movie characters like Proximus or Anger, from "Inside Out."  

Oh, look!  Even Ajax got some gifts this morning.  There were some Build-a-Bear clothing items under the tree for him as well, from Matt Olson (Braves clothing) and also some graduation themed items too (from Troy and Gabriella).  

You can see Polaroid was a theme of the morning too, as Maddie's very much into all things Polaroid.  She got a lot of film from Uncle George, but there were also other little things this year, like a Christmas ornament, plus a key chain, plus a large build-a-polaroid block set, which you'll see later.

Oh, there it is now!  This was pretty cool, and at first Maddie thought it would be fairly quick and easy to put together.  Moo-ah-ah-ah.  That's foreshadowing there.

You can see she got plenty of new clothing from a themed store she saw a lot of items from.  She was there this summer for the first time, visiting a physical location at a mall as we were at the Battle of Atlanta event.  Santa must have known she liked a lot of these items - Lilo and Stitch clothing, plus plenty of clothing with Miyazaki themes too, like Calcifer pajamas.  Maddie got some gifts from the susuwatari, those little black fuzzy things from a few Miyazaki movies. 

Oh, and here's a new bag she's excited to have (from Bilbo Baggins), replacing the other one that's been slowly wearing down.  And look at the faces on the movie she's opening up now.  

Oh, there's those Calcifer pajamas.  Right in front of the virtual fire there too!  We didn't need a fire in the fireplace today, as the weather outside was fairly warm and sunny, at least by comparison to previous days.

This is a funny label.  Imagine going through all this effort to make a box for a quality product, and missing the ball that much on spelling.  Mom got some nice items today, this being one of them.  You'll see it later, but it was a nice thing from Maddie.  Mom also got a new set of headphones - the highest quality ones you can get - and some Bon Ami (from Luther Heggs).  We had no idea they still made Bon Ami.  Mom joked that now she had something to clean Maddie's bathtub with!  Mom also got a copy of "The Music Man" (from Ferris Bueller and Maleficent), lots of body wash, new jackets and sweaters, a nice bird book, a new hummingbird feeder, and other items too.  I got some new vinyl records that look amazing, a book with a collection of Discworld art, new jeans, some Wallace and Gromit figures and other things.  Here's a few more pictures of Maddie having a great time opening her gifts.

Ah, this is from the Battle of Atlanta Committee.  Maddie was thinking it was going to be something related to taekwondo or the event itself, like a framed picture or something.  But she burst out laughing when she saw that it was a Funko Pop figure of Dengar, a Star Wars character known for having a bandage on his head.  Yes, like the one Maddie wore after getting hit on the head with a sword after the Battle of Atlanta (because they made the demonstration space too small).  

Oh, and look at this gift from her pal Ajax:

Yes, that's a full-on Axolotl onesie, complete with a tail too.  It had the whole "pink bunny suit" vibe, so Maddie posed for a picture wearing it while on the stairwell.  Unlike Ralphie, I think Maddie might like this and might wear it more often than he would.

Ah, and here's a new taekwondo bag (from Lord Baggington, Esquire).  She needed one of those.  The morning went on for a good bit, with occasional breaks, but plenty of laughter and joy and Christmas spirit as we opened our gifts.

So after this, we got to cleaning up right away.  Always a big ordeal with the wrapping paper and boxes, but we cleaned up pretty well.  As mentioned earlier, Nana has the flu, so we knew we weren't going over there today, which is still shocking.  Rather than have Mom prepare some big Christmas meal here, we decided to do the "A Christmas Story" thing, and go off to our favorite Chinese restaurant.

That's right, we went to Wang's on Christmas Day.  It was open all day, and by the look of things, many,  many other people had the same exact idea.  Still, we got there just right and secured the last booth, and sat down to enjoy a wonderful Christmas meal together, although we didn't opt for any goose.

We got home after that, and the day was pretty chill from there on.  Maddie started this building block project, and had no idea that there were this many tiny little bricks inside!

Not joking:  there were over 800 tiny little bricks inside that box!  So she spent over an hour on this, while we were sitting there, relaxing.  We listened to our last installment of the audio version of Scrooge that we were listening to this week, and we watched the Disney World Christmas Day parade too.  Of interest was a segment filmed at the new Lookout Cay in the Bahamas.  The Junkanoo portion was pretty cool.  The other random guy singing a snowy Christmas song all by himself at a small part of the beach was odd.  Still, it was all good today.

Ah, Maddie finally finished her tiny Polaroid model.  This took a long time, and she's quite proud of it.  It even opens up, and out from it comes a little polaroid picture too!

Okay, one more thing:  today is not just Christmas.  It's Hanukkah!  This morning I had gotten Mom a few things like a Hanukkah devotional and some chocolate coins.  She brought up the menorah, and ordered new candles, because the next eight nights we'll be lighting candles.  We might do the dreidel thing tomorrow, and there's this other craft we have too, one we've been holding on to for years.  But tonight was the first night, so we had Maddie attempt to light the shamash candle.   

She's laughing here because she didn't know how to use the lighter at first, and so we were reading this scripture from Deuteronomy with such reverence and the entire time she's struggling with the lighter!  As you can see, we got it figured out!

Anyway, we read from our devotional and we said a prayer, all this with the candle lit as well.  Christmas and Hanukkah on the same day!

The rest of the night was quiet.  I was listening to a few vinyl records, Mom was enjoying some of her new bath stuff, and we eventually watched a few other things on television, like the new episode of "Skeleton Crew," which ended in quite the cliffhanger.  

At the end of it all, we were upstairs where it all began at 6am this morning.  We read from "A Christmas Carol" again, reading of the visit from Christmas Present, and then we read some from "Hogfather."  And then it was time for prayers, and for sleep.  It was a quiet Christmas together, but it was still very, very nice.