Saturday, January 5, 2008

Christmas is over for another year

Christmas has come and gone, now the Christmas stuff needs to be put away for another year. Thinking back to my childhood, life was so much simpler. We didn't put up any type of decorations in or outside, we did give & receive gifts and had homemade cookies and homemake candies. I was so happy when I got to help with the baking.

Right after we were first married I made all my childhood sweets. Only after several years of gaining weight realizing that I also ate all of it and have cut down on all those sweets! Even after I got old enough to bake and cook, there were so many of us that one or two rounds of passing out the goodies, they would be gone. So my mom and older sisters would hide them. When I would come home from school, my favorite part of the day would be to "hunt for them and sneak a piece".

It'll take me several days to get everything put away here and order brought back to our home. Compared to my upbringing I now live an extravagant life. As a child we daily had to sweep and dust, one of our early morning jobs. Daily chores. Coming from a large family, everyone had a job.

For example, making a meal, washing dishes, drying and putting them away, clearing the table. I never had to do all of that until I got married. I was exhausted the first year of our marriage because I had to get used to doing everything. It was always wonderful when my husband volunteered to help. We didn't have a dish washer either so if the dishes didn't get put away after getting washed, they sat on the counter. Yikes! God bless the inventors of dishwashers!