Only Two More Days......

"Zar cheated!!! He opened a present early!" That was Tessie wailing because I received one of Chrisie Friesen's books on poly clay work yesterday.

As soon as she saw it, she naturally thought it was for Zar, since the title was "Steampunkery". It is really a book on clockwork animals and bugs that she makes and how she does it. If you would like to see some of her things go to http://www.cforiginals.net/ She does wonderful clay work and has a real sense of humor in her writing. I downed it in one night. It's great.

Anyway, as usual, I had a lot of explaining to do. No. The book was not for Zar. Yes. The book was for me.

"Well! Why do you get to open it before Christmas?" she demanded. I countered with, "Because it's not a Christmas present."

Tessie has decided that almost everything that comes into the house now is a Christmas present and should be wrapped accordingly. She tried to wrap a couple of bags of chocolate chips that I bought to make cookies. I had to take them away from her and tell her if she wanted to eat, she couldn't be wrapping all of the food and putting bows on it. As I was explaining this to her, I opened the refrigerator. There sat a gallon of milk with a big red bow, a block of cheese with a green one and some carrots with little gold bows on the end of each one.

She quickly jumped in front of me and whisked away the bows. "OK. No bows on food. Can I at least put one on Santa's cookies?"

I told her that it would be OK for the cookies, since they are a gift for Santa.

When I finished wrapping presents, I went to stash them under the tree and what did I find? Yup! You guessed it. Tessie had gone through all of the gifts. To her delight, there were two for her from Santa. No. I didn't put them there. The secret Santa is Walter. He showed them to me yesterday. I told him to hide them. Evidently they weren't quite hidden well enough.

She made me take the photo to document her very first Christmas presents ever! In the picture, she was sitting on the taller of the two holding a plate of cookies for Santa.

I had to burst her bubble and tell her that he wouldn't be here for at least a day and a half.

She jumped down, stashed the cookies in the tree and stomped off. I heard her say as she wandered away, "I'm ready for Christmas. What's the holdup? I want Christmas now!!!"

She went and found Zar, and they both went to find Cordelia.

Since her house has been banished to the bathtub along with the Clockwork Cottage for the duration, she is temporarily homeless.

Zar did his best Santa imitation to cheer her up. Unfortunately, he comes off more as Groucho Marx with a peppermint stick for a cigar. He's going to have to work on that.

Tessie told Cordelia that she could move into the cottage. She said, "After all, I will be getting a new manor house soon."

To make a long story short.....Cordelia will be moving back to her own house after Christmas, so there is no need for starting another house right now.....

Alas. It was going so well until a few minutes ago. I think that I can put Tessie off until the 26th. Then there is going to be a great deal of trouble, once again. Any bets on which one of us is going to win? As my dad used to say....."I will give you three guesses and the first two don't count."

See you tomorrow.