Welcome to my Sunday Chat where I ramble about what’s been going on in my world, what the rest of the family and I have been reading, watching, listening to, and what I’ve been writing.

This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.

“Let’s just use paper plates for Christmas dinner,” I told my mom.

We’ve had a lot going on and some members of the family haven’t been feeling well from  couple different health issues.

Plus it was only the six of us so there was no need for anything fancy.

I heard a small “uh-huh..” on the other end of the phone and figured she was agreeing with me. The next day, though, The Husband, kids and I walked into a kitchen that had been set with a Christmas tablecloth and very fancy plates and goblets.

“These were my Mama’s,” Mom said of the plates. “And we thought we better get them out now because we might never have a chance to use them again.”

I figured that might be their dark humor since they are in their 80s and often say odd things like this to us.

Mom said she actually meant because we might not want to take the time to drag them out again. I added that we might not want to take the chance of them getting broken since I am quite a klutz.

The plates, by the way, were made in Baveria and were a gift of some kind to my grandfather when he used to work for Pepsi Co. That was probably 50 years ago.

The crystal glasses were gifts to my parents on their wedding day. They’ve been married 60 years.

There were also a set of glass water glasses that belonged to my paternal grandmother.

Somehow, we made it through dinner without breaking anything. My husband also made it through washing the plates without breaking anything.

After dinner we had a quick gift opening session that was quite quick this year since we were all broke. *snort* It was a nice time, though, and it was preceded by the reading from the Bible of the Christmas story, which we do every year.

Our family had a lot to celebrate this year.

My sister-in-law, who had been in the hospital  for an entire month for heart issues, came home on Christmas Eve. She was/is still dealing with a Norovirus she caught while there and will have  lot of new routines she’ll need to do for her condition, but she is home.

The Husband has been dealing with a health issue which could have been so much worse but has been caught and is being treated now and we are very, very thankful for that.

Money is tight right now, but we were all together and found a lot of time to watch movies and simply have fun.

It was a cold week and that was nice in some ways because it meant we had the white Christmas Little Miss had wanted.

We have electric heat upstairs and downstairs we have heating oil and a wood stove.

Thursday we didn’t light the fire because we simply didn’t get to it, and it was a reminder how well it helps to heat the rest of the house when we have it lit because I had to put four blankets on me to get warm that night. I had also taken a shower right before bed and my hair was wet so that, and the fact I’d forgotten to turn on the electric heat upstairs didn’t help at all.  The fire was definitely lit Friday, but we didn’t have to light it last night because we are having a small warm up this weekend with temps in the 40s and 50s.

This weekend we have been relaxing and enjoying our time together since The Husband is off work until the week after next and The Boy doesn’t have to return to tech school until Thursday.

We hope to see the Christmas lights at a local golf course Monday if it doesn’t get rained out.

I will finish Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon’s today or tomorrow and that will be my final book of the year. My first book of 2025 will be Christy by Catherine Marshall, which I have already started and am really enjoying.

It is a book based very loosely on the life of Marshall’s mother and takes place in the early 1900s.  

This past week I finished Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson – a novella part of the Walt Longmire series.

I kept trying to read Shepherd’s Abiding to keep with the Christmas spirt, but I kept going back to Tooth and Claw to see if Walt and Henry got away from the psycho polar bear.

Little Miss is very close to the end of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

The Husband is reading World Traveler by Anthony Bourdain which is also on my TBR.

I watched a lot of Christmas movies or Christmas-related shows last week including

The Christmas episode of The Dick VanDyke Show

Christmas in the Smokies

A ton of Mary Berry episodes

The Christmas episode of All Creatures Great and Small

Jingle All the Way

The Last Holiday

Then I also watched the North and South mini-series. Good grief..that was depressing in many ways. Then I watched another depressing film called Me Before You.

The Husband and I also watched Hombre – again depressing, but Paul Newman was in it so that was good.

I watched a lot of Murder She Wrote one day as well.

I will hopefully watch some more uplifting movies and shows this week.

I’m editing Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree and brainstorming ideas for the fourth Gladwynn Grant book. You can pre-order Gladwynn Shakes the Family Tree (a cozy mystery) here:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DR6BG3ZR?

Last week on the blog I shared:

• Remembering Grandma and my one childhood Christmas that was white
• Some highlights from our Comfy, Cozy Christmas Link Up!
• Sunday Chat: Merry Christmas, Christmas movies, and looks like we will have a white Christmas after all

I also wanted to offer a quick thank you to everyone who took part in our Comfy, Cozy Christmas link up. That was so much fun. You can still add posts or just read the ones that are already there at this link: https://lisahoweler.com/comfy-cozy-christmas-2024/

A quick reminder for January plans for this blog and Erin with Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.

Erin and I are planning some Cozy Crafternoons on Zoom in January and February to try to beat those winter blahs that happen after Christmas. The plans for now are two a month.

We will just all meet up on the date and time, and individually work on whatever we want – embroidery, coloring, knitting, crocheting, jewelry making, etc, while chatting.

Erin says she will be embroidering during the session. I might be writing, drawing, or editing photos.

If you are interested in learning more send an email either to me at lisahoweler@gmail.com or to Erin at crackercrumblife@gmail.com. That way we will have your email for the zoom link! Our first scheduled crafternoon is January 11th at 1 pm EST.

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.