It's been foggy and slightly damp all week so far, and when I was driving home a night or two ago, there were patches of frost and low-laying fog on the ground. Okay, so it's not snow, but it's the closest to a white Christmas we get around here. I'll take what I can get.

It actually started raining Thursday, and continued on and off on Friday. I listened to the weather reports a bit grimly as they insisted that the rain would continue through today, because Richard had declared today Hanging Day and if it was raining there was no way he was going to go hang out on the slippery roof just to put up lights.

I'd mapped out our morning and afternoon yesterday, figuring out just how we'd get everything accomplished, but when I woke up this morning and realized that the promised rain had not yet arrived, that schedule was thrown out the window, and as soon as we'd eaten breakfast, Richard commenced with the hanging of the lights. There were a few sprinkles here and there over the morning but nothing serious enough to deter him.

While he hung the lights outside, I addressed and signed and stuffed all the cards for the card exchange on Cyberkat (an email list for cat people like myself), and then wrapped up all the presents for my family in preparation for shipping them off to Seattle. This is because this Christmas instead of having everyone come to my parents' house, we're all flying up to Seattle to spend Christmas at my little sister's house. And because I don't want to deal with trying to bring all those presents with us, I made sure we had every single present purchased so we could ship them up to Seattle ahead of time and not have to worry about lugging them onto an overcrowded plane with us on Christmas Eve. This had the added benefit that we now are completely done with all of our Christmas shopping – not just for my family but for Richard's family, and for our friends as well. I am still a little in awe of how organized we managed to be about it, but really, all the credit goes to the existence of online shopping. Amazon.com is my very best friend at holiday time, yes it is!

We ate lunch and watched little brown sparrows flit around on our newly planted trees in our backyard (never fear, there will be pictures one of these days when they're all done with the planting and the laying of ground cover and so on), and then we headed out, first to CostCo to return a present which didn't get to be a present after all because we got something far cooler instead, and then to the fabric store so I could pick out a button for The Sweater (a very cute little pale green dragon). I simultaneously sewed on the button and had an argument with two cats over which one of us was allowed to 'play' with the needle, the thread, and the button, and then we did a hasty gathering of names for the regular Christmas cards, and Richard worked on the yearly Christmas letter while I zipped off to mail all the presents. I was also supposed to pick up stamps for all the aforementioned addressed, signed, and stuffed cards, but I forgot. I guess I know what I'll be doing tomorrow afternoon, after church and lunch and getting the tree, and addressing and signing and stuffing a bazillion more cards, and everything else we have planned.

So instead of pictures of our house all in lights (because it is raining and dark outside now and I am not willing to go get soggy just for photographs), or pictures of our yard (see excuse for that mentioned earlier), I will leave you with lesson number one in what not to do when pondering holiday decoration. Please, if you care at all about your neighbors' sanity, stay far away from the inflatable decor. It can only lead to bad, bad things.