The Day Before Our Early Christmas

Oh, my goodness....what happened here? I'm all decorated...even this blog. I'll keep it this way till after Christmas...I thought that the red looked so festive.
Today's the day before our family Christmas. It's bright, sunny, calm and cold. The birds are eating...so many different varieties I won't name them all. I am missing my little Tufted Titmouse this year. I wonder why they appear one year and not the next? The Mourning Doves haven't come yet either. We had a pair of them that nested here each year...then Joe saw one just fall to the ground one day. We thought maybe it was sick. We looked later on and it was gone. So maybe our pair will not be here anymore. I hope we see them again on our feeder.
I wrapped all the gifts. Gift bags sure make it easier now days. I only had to buy 3 of them this year...all the others are from past Christmases. Everything that was ordered for tomorrow has arrived. Two red guys are all wrapped and ready for Drake and Luke. Those huggable Elmos took our eye and we just couldn't resist.I think that we are looking forward to seeing them work...as much as a kid would :)
We were talking about our Christmas when we were small again this morning. Only a couple of gifts and a stocking under the tree for a few years.  I was listening to WGN, while driving yesterday, and they were talking about a caller's stocking in her childhood. She told of hanging a stocking on St Nicholas Eve...Dec. 5th. She would find a little present, some fruit..and apple and an orange, candy,  some gold foil chocolate coins and a lump of coal and an onion. She said that the coal and onion represented her bad behavior. She always got a lump of coal and an onion in hers.....no matter how good she thought she was. My stocking always had an apple and an orange, some nuts in their shells, a toothbrush, a few other little things and then Mom and Dad would fill the rest with hard candy. That hard candy stuck to everything and the felt from the stocking came off on the candy....what a mess, but it was that way every year.
That hard Christmas candy was always in a bowl on our coffee table....along with a wooden bowl of nuts to crack holding a nutcracker and three nut picks. Joe always talked about the hard candy, so last year I found some at our $ store...it wasn't as good as we remembered. My favorite hard candy was the filled raspberry ones and the very thin ones with a bit of chocolate in them.
I guess that I had better get going. We want to get it all done today and still leave time to go to Mass tonight. It's going to be a busy...fun day.
Balisha