Hope you can join us on FIRSTFriday!

On the First Week of Christmas My True Life gave to me... Twelve boxes of ornaments out of the attic, eleven strands of lights that don't work, ten new double strands that do, nine party invitations, eight more presents to design, seven special orders, six evergreen sprays to build, five doctor's appointments, four elves to find, three credit card receipts to iron out, two trees bought and put up, and one whole inch of snow!

I was wondering why I hadn't written in my blog this week and then looked at this list and it doesn't count the three extracurricular activities taxi rides and uh, running the shop! Weeeeeelll, I must say I tried to do one thing at a time and stay present during each activity! Even if that includes watching the light turn red, green, red while coming off Haycock Road!
Taking care of business first: It's the first Friday of the month and that means FIRST FRIDAY in Falls Church! At Stifel & Capra we are extending the time of our Happy Hour/Artist's Reception. From 5 to 9pm we will offer refreshments, a free gift basket raffle and selected sales on seasonal items. Hope you can join us! If not Friday then we are open Saturday from 9:30 to 5:30.

The kids are being such great elves this year; I don't know how Bob & I would manage without them. The kids got ALL of the Christmas boxes out of the attic without breaking anything and with the help of some kindly neighbors got the fresh Fraser Firs into the house and up in their stands. Of course the sourpuss mom noted that tidying the house of debris FIRST might have made it easier to decorate but c'est la vie. After wrestling all of the strands of lights into submission we got the trees decorated with enough ornaments left over to trim the bookcases and our "little" clock! Then it was on to rampaging game of "find the elf!". They tend to like hanging out in the kitchen just like most of our guests...

On the doctor's appt side we will all live. I had some complications from recent oral surgery and being a wee bit twitchy about infection these days (!) have been circling back a lot to the surgeon but all is well for now. Bob received an early gift from his psysiatrist [in a stranger than fiction truth, Bob's leg doctor is named Dr. Shin!] recently: a prescription for a "c"Leg. Thate is the super high tech prostetic limb that has a receiver implanted in one's bionic knee that receives signals from a transmitter on your other "good" leg to mirror you gait, etc. This type of leg can enable you to crouch or walk smoother on uneven terrain. There are a lot of neat things about it but the not so neat thing is that everyone agrees that it will need to wait until after Bob's hip replacement surgery next year. No sense in fitting a "super leg" on a body that is changing so they say.
Bob did great in the slippery mess. Translation: he didn't fall. Hope you slide through your weekend with aplomb, comfort and joy!
A special thank you to the street elf that shoveled for me this morning. (Henry I assume that was you!)