We are in the final week. The Christmas Cards are DONE! Moving onto the baking today. Looking over recipes, making a list of ingredients.  Yeah! It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. The girls are coming home. Only for TWO days! Christmas Eve and Christmas Day…but it certainly is better than not having them at all. And, we have son-in-laws. My mother would have loved that part. We were three girls, but my mom loved having the boys visit. I think I often wondered if she would have preferred boys…but no matter, we were loved and cherished, instructed and educated, chided and punished until we were able to go out into the world and see it for ourselves. And I think, in some ways, I terrified my mom!

And so I think about story. My stories and they roll around in the back of my head with each and every recipe I pick up and think about making. They fall into my lap when I look at the ornaments on the tree and remember how they came to sit so prominently in our lives. They kick me upside the head when I see the all the Santa’s on the mantle and I remember this friend or that one, some still with us, some not, and I offer a Christmas prayer, and hold close the story.

So. Yes. I am seriously writing….