A "Brown" Christmas

A Brown Christmas


I'm Hoping that all of my readers had a wonderful Christmas - I meant to write on Saturday before leaving for WI and post a Merry Christmas post, but the morning went by too fast!

Well, we officially had a Brown Christmas here in Duluth, it is our first one since 1979. The others were 1939 and 1923. A “brown” Christmas means that there was not a trace of snow on our ground at 6 am December 25th!

Hudson, WI also had a brown Christmas. One thing nice about a brown Christmas, the travel was great. Traveling to and from Hudson to spend the weekend and Christmas with our daughter and her family was a breeze. The roads were dry. Even coming home, when rain and sleet had been forecast possibly for Monday, the roads were bone dry. We sometimes don’t see white in the southern part of our trip, but it was really funny coming home yesterday and not seeing any white on the ground as we headed closer to the northland! On Saturday and Sunday the temperatures in Hudson were warm. I ran to the grocery store for Dawn about 12:30 on Sunday afternoon, and the temperature was 42 degrees, unheard of for December 24th! I have never seen so many people in a grocery store as I saw that day!

Brown Christmas or White Christmas... it doesn't really matter. Christmas is Christmas, no matter what the temperature or color of the ground. The best thing about Christmas is celebrating the birth of Our Lord, and celebrating and spending time with our families. That is what we did, and once again, we had a beautiful, happy Christmas, because we were together with our family. I talked with my siblings in PA last week and on Saturday and greeted them, talked with some cousins from PA and of course, I've been receiving every day Christmas greetings from friends and family in PA, those cards, calls and greetings all add to my joy.

We had a great Christmas with the family. Our daughter makes the best Italian meal for us each Christmas Eve. She makes lasagna like I make it, really yummy, with meatballs, sausages, salad, and all the trimmings.(She learned well). With my esophagus problems, I didn’t dare risk eating any of it. Her husband made the best homemade squash soup for me, it was delicious and very creamy and it went down my throat very well! It’s funny though, that I am able to eat cookies, fudge and all the fattening things from Christmas … they seem to go fine, I suppose because they turn to “mush”, so don’t feel too sorry for me. I had some eating enjoyment.

The little one, our 6 year old granddaughter, made out the best, gift wise, she got so many things, that she didn’t know what to play with first! I am so happy that one of the gifts I gave her, I picked out myself, no help from her Mom…and it’s a gift that she absolutely loved. After I had found quite a few things for her, I was shopping one day and saw this pretty light blue double breasted dressy type coat, with a light blue “fur” collar. Blue is her very favorite color. I could just see it on Maddy. I was so delighted that when she opened it, she was as excited about it as I had been. We went to my son in law’s parents’ home yesterday before heading home to Duluth, and she insisted on wearing the coat, even though it was so warm, none of us wore coats! It did look really great on her, and I was pleased that I found a good gift to really please her. I hit the jackpot with the gifts I gave Skylar and our boys, Sarah, and Dawn and Bob this year too. They all seemed extra pleased and knowing that I made good gift choices, made me feel better about Christmas shopping. Bob and I did not exchange gifts this year, because we are planning a trip in Feb. or March, and we decided we’d better keep our money toward that!

A very fun part of our weekend with Dawn’s family was enjoying the new addition they have to the family. Their little puppy that they just got … her name is Coco Channel, we call her Coco, and she is part Yorkie and part Maltese, both breeds being very cute little dogs, so you can imagine how cute this puppy is. I took pictures, so when I get them back, you can be sure I will post a photo or two to go with my post below... that is all about Coco. Our son Rob, titled the post, commenting that Christmas this year was pretty much about Coco.