Quick Christmas Recap

This might be my last post of the year, but I hope not... 
We had such a great holiday season!  We traveled to Naples, Florida for the week leading up to Christmas to visit my son and his girlfriend.  They both work in the service industry down there and can't get away for the holiday because it's just about their busiest time.  It was so good to see them both and hang out with them (and the sunny 80 degrees every day wasn't bad, either).   We flew home on Christmas day, which is the perfect day to travel -- the airports (and jets) are almost empty!

When we got back to beautiful Michigan, our other two sons and family and friends came to have our 'second Christmas'.  My youngest son brought his brand-new fiance (they had just gotten engaged on Christmas Eve),  We're so excited to have her become part of the family!  Sadly, my aunt (who's 89) and my niece & nephew and their families couldn't come, so we weren't complete, but it was a great family get-together nonetheless.

Some dear friends who moved away 2 years ago came back into town for a quick overnight visit.  We (my friends & family) had our annual (15th, actually) 'Bucket of Doom'.   That's a plastic bucket crammed full of bottle rockets (600+) with a special design for optimum firing, built onto a custom-made wooden sled.  It never lives up to expectations -- only 2/3 of the rockets ever go off and only about half of those go UP & not sideways -- but that's part of the fun of the bucket!   It's a good thing we have acres of land & snow on the ground!

After the excitement of the bucket died down, we all gathered for a spirited round of Mexican Dominoes.  We had LOTS of laughs and such a good time.  There isn't much better at Christmas than family & dear friends sharing the precious gift of laughter!

Here's the fun THRIFT part:  my friend, who now lives in Minnesota, has become my personal picker!  How cool is that!  She brought me a box of wonderful treasures from estate sales in the north country and also a box of hand-picked great stuff from her mother-in-law.

 We looked at the stuff a little while she was here, but there was so much going on, I didn't get a chance to take any pictures to show you.  Tomorrow, I'm going to go through it all and (hopefully) my last post of 2011 will be a tribute (and giant THANK YOU) to my picker friend Kally!   I have to admit that I'm glad the craziness of Christmas is behind us, though it's always a let-down when everyone goes away and the house gets SO quiet again.   I'll just have to soothe my blues by looking at some great vintage stuff & sharing it with you!