maeve!!! YeeHaw!!! I want to hear all about that first load of laundry!!

I went around the house over the weekend and gathered the bits and pieces I wanted to send my daughter, Kyrstie, back East for Christmas gifts: a pink table scarf with embroidery (she loves pink!), two of my mom's antique glass bottles (good for paintbrushes, dried flowers, etc.), my copy of The Encyclopedia of Natural Healing (took up a lot of space on the coffee-table-trunk), incense and some really neat hoop earrings with little silver coins dangling from them. I told her I wasn't spending a dime except on grandkids. Told my other kids, too. They are all going to benefit from decluttering "mom's" house!

Anyway, so all of that, plus presents for my grandsons back East, Akira and Elijah, go out the door with Rog, tomorrow, as well as a package with Morgan's present which I am sending back and have already ordered something else. Oh what the heck, he's to young to read Mudcat, yet...it's a drum! I am excited about that one, esp.

I have piles of papers stacked in the office which will have holes punched in them, then put in binders, then in envelopes and mailed off to family as Christmas gifts - updated family history from my maternal grandma's memoirs and my dad's oral history. Not the new novel, not yet!

I also looked at the front steps tonight and realised we need to turn out the flower pots into the beds to build up the soil, do something with the old wicker rocker which is losing its seat, but means so much to me, i.e. can I save it? And, bring in a wrought iron stand to use inside for the winter, as well as sweep.

We always put a free sign on stuff out front and it disappears fast!