What I want for Christmas

Hobbygasa presented a challenge on her blog yesterday to post a list of the seven things that you want for Christmas.

For as long as I can remember, I have not been able to sit through the song "I'll Be Home For Christmas" without being reduced to a big blubbering pool of tears. It gets worse every year. So that's made me realize that what I really want for Christmas if for everyone, everywhere to be home for Christmas. Every man, woman, child everywhere. I want them to be where ever it is that they consider home for Christmas. I don't want any family to look at an empty chair around their holiday table.

Oh yeah, and maybe some diamond earrings. ;)

I'm spoiled

I am the first to admit that I am spoiled. I don't think I have ever tried to deny that I am spoiled. I have made my peace with it and I am OK. I am spoiled.rotten.

What is it, that has spoiled me so? Electricity. Electricity and all that comes along with it. I love heat, hot water, lights, cable tv, my DVR, high speed internet, phone service. I love using my washer and dryer, my dishwasher, hairdryer, refrigerator...I could go on and on.

Having had no electricity for the last four days I have had a lot of time to think about how much I love these things.

In my last post, I mentioned that we had gotten a lot of this:


Turns out that was a bit of an understatement. We did not get a lot of ice, we got a freakin' butt load of it.


That tree is pretty much destroyed, as is this one:


I won't bore you with the rest of the pictures. We have over 40 trees in our yard and there is not one of them that didn't suffer significant damage. We will be cleaning up limbs for the rest of our lives. The neighbors across the street have a tree limb in their bedroom.

I heard one report that stated there were 600,000 homes and businesses across the state of Oklahoma without electricity last week. We were without from Sunday night until Friday evening, but there are still a lot of people without power. I pray for strength for them until their power is restored. It's quite tiring.

Enough of the negativitiy. I have decided that the power outage has thrown me seriously off of my Christmas knitting schedule. I have put the mystery project aside for now. I have got to spend my time a little more efficiently for the next week, so I went to my LYS and got this:


Isn't that a pretty little multi-layered yarn cake? It is all Cascade 220 and it is going to be three pretty little felted purses for three pretty little girls.

A little of this and a little of that

Our cold, freezing rainy Sunday consisted of a little of this:



I spent a lot of time enjoying my fireplace today. There are few things that I find more soothing than a fire.

And a little of this:



Did a little knitting on the mystery project, which by the way, is kicking my @$$. It's grudge knitting at this point, I am going to finish it just to prove to myself that I am smarter than a piece of yarn.

And a little of this:



We had to have some cocoa to warm ourselves up after we cleared all the ice off the steps.

And a LOT of this:



Ice...it's everywhere and it continues to rain off and on. One of our smaller trees got so heavy from the ice that it was completely uprooted. We have limbs down ALL OVER our yard and the evergreen tree is bent almost in half from the weight of the ice. Our power was out for a couple of hours this evening and I know of others whose power has been out most of the day. It is supposed to rain for the next couple of days, I am hoping that it will turn to snow, it's easier to deal with than this ice.

Who's responsible for this weather?

Meteorologist Frank Mitchell says we are going to have dreadful cold, freezing rain all week, but he isn't blaming the Canadians for it.