It Snowed So We Started Celebrating Christmas

We had a little sprinkling of hard snow balls (not flakes exactly, just little tiny puffs of snow) that fell from the heavens this morning and the wind chill index was 24 degrees. The wind was whistling and it was darned cold but, of course, there was no accumulation of snow.

We've become old codgers around here so we were up at 7:30 (I'm such a tired old codger that I was in bed and sound asleep at 8:30 on Friday night). Breakfast from the local super buffet sounded cheering so we don't our fleece coats and headed out.

For the first time I got to use my heated car seats. S-w-e-e-t! Man, that heat bubbling through my fleece jacket felt good. We filled up on ham and potatoes and hash and bacon (we DO like our pork around here) and eggs and fruit and then, since I'd been kind of mopping around, Hubby took me Christmas shopping.

Here's the thing. We don't shop anymore. His knees hurt, my back hurts, and shopping requires standing around looking at stuff we don't need to buy. I haven't been in a store other than a grocery or a Sam's Club for over a year. Today we actually went Christmas shopping and it was GREAT GOOD fun! Spending nearly a $1000 does that to one, I guess.

First we did the Big Lot store near the breakfast buffet and I bought a couple of emery boards and a box of band-aids -- all for my classroom. The total price for everything (including some tuna mix-ins and crackers) was under $20.

Next we took in our local Marshalls. I like Marshalls a lot: high end stuff at reasonable prices and if you shop carefully, great deals. Hubby picked up a ton of stuff for his Texas sister -- and his choices were really cute and different. I got all the goodies to make up Christmas treats for my work crew -- I bought the huge coffee mugs last year at the after Christmas sale at an exclusive China outlet -- a pair for everyone -- and now I have the flavored coffees and chocolate spoons to go with. For my favorite two mentors I got gorgeous hat boxes to fit everything into. Really cool. However, at Marshalls we spent over $150 (not much over, but still. . . ).

Then Hubby thought that we should check out the closing of Circuit City and our wallets took the real hit. We wandered in a very crowded store and Hubby immediately spied the hugely expensive and very complicated digital Canon that he has admired for the last five years and so we broke down and bought it for him as an early Christmas present. I picked out some CDs for $3.99 each -- and they were reduced another 15% -- so that's practically free, right? Then Hubby took us to the GPS department. I've wanted a GPS since we got to use one with the rental car we took to Tulsa to get Luie. The cheapest one was already sold out -- except for the display -- so Hubby got them to take it from the case and sell it to us. It's a little battered but it worked fine getting us home from Circuit City.

Now I have my Christmas present and Hubby has his -- and we have the presents for Houston sister and all the makings for my co-workers and we're not totally broke, yet.

It only takes a little snow to put us in the holiday mood. I think I'll go find our Christmas CDs . . .