Winter Joys and Woes

This month was rapidly slipping by without the usual candy making done, so I took Saturday to try and get it knocked out.  The fudges of Christmas-black walnut, peanut butter/chocolate, plain chocolate, coconut  and toffee.  Between my encouragers, Handy Man and Gardener E., I got them done, along with Merry Berry Freeze and Strawberry Fluff.  And I cooked dinner. Woo Hoo!
Then it was time to wrap gifts for our sibling brunch.  I love beautifully wrapped gifts, but here's the deal, if I'm going to go to the trouble to do beautiful wrapping I either want it under the tree for a couple of weeks for me to enjoy, or I want to give it to someone who will "oooooh," and "aaawww," over it bit before ripping into my herculean artistic endeavor.  That doesn't seem to work out often so they usually just get stuffed in a sack.  I spent a bit of time on these. I enjoy it when I have a minute.

 Before the fudge making marathon, Handy Man and I had to run to the grocery.  When we were in Aldi's he pointed out this hard candy in jars.  I love old fashioned candy in jars.  I commented that they were very pretty and he wanted me to get one.  I then remembered my precious Giddy-Up, who has a terrible reaction to red dye 40.  I didn't want anything pretty to look at that he couldn't have, so I was about to pass it up.  For kicks and giggles, I checked the ingredient list.  It is a German made product and lo and behold is colored with such crazy things as beets, elderberries and turmeric.  No. Red. Dye.
Hooray for Pap's good eye.  I asked, "How much are they?" Pap said, "Just get it!" So I did ( actually, very reasonable).

Poor Rae Rae has some miserable winter yuck.  I told her I'd feed her men if she wanted to send them over.  Mr. Smiley has an early bedtime, so only Giddy-Up and Papa came for dinner.  Giddy-up was excited about candy with no bad, bad red dye. He particularly liked the oval ones that he said were footballs.  Three year olds are so about sorting you know. Then he wanted all the footballs in a jar for him. I told him I had a very special football jar. We found enough to fill it up, so he thought another jar was in order.  Next a jar was needed for some green and red trees and then just one jar more, ahem.

His Papa tells him stories about elves and dwarves and such at bedtime.  He spied the snowmen graham crackers and told me they were dwarves.  I got some white icing for snow, then some silver sprinkles for, well you know, silver that the dwarves mine. I so enjoyed his company.  And that son-in-law of mine is a prince.  I never have them for dinner or do anything that he isn't so appreciative.  I love that.

When you are in a school where all parts of Christmas can be celebrated, we don't take it lightly and celebrate in big ways with musicals, Advent and teas.  I love it, but it is stressful, so I really enjoyed a little time to just play with my sweet boy.

I have the crud too. Just common cold sort, no fever.  Second time this fall/winter-highly unusual for me, and quite unappreciated I might add.

After our sibling brunch Sunday, I visited Jimi.  The atmosphere was a bit tense and charged.  Bless his heart, he's managed this well, but today was eight weeks and I could see he was about at the end of his tether.  When you can't get anywhere by yourself and when Kindred Care offers zero therapies on the weekends, the days are very long.  Well, today they moved him to rehab.  In one respect that was wonderful news and exactly what he needed (us too, it's on this side of the river).  On the other hand, in eight weeks they weren't really able to get his meds right and keep his levels stable, so it is equally terrifying for him to be in a whole new place where once again,  no one knows him or his situation.  I would appreciate prayers for wisdom for those providing his medical care and for his continued healing.