merry christmas and thank god for the fire extinguisher

We had a delicious dinner, plenty of sweets, and a lot of laughs. Holidays at our house are not quiet and usually not uneventful as you will read later. Ella thought I should be Santa and pass out gifts so I'm wearing the Grinch hat that decorates the top of our tree.



Ella learned how to take pictures on her mom's digital camera. She wanted her Popop to take a picture of her taking a picture. It must be a family trait...my brothers like to do that at family gatherings, although they like it to be spontaneous. Still fun. This could be a commercial for a digital camera...so easy a three-year-old can do it! She takes pretty good pictures!

Here are all the kids who were here: Reg and Amber, Emily and Bob and Ella, and Peter. Tiffany and Eric were in Pine Island with his parents and Evelyn. We missed them.

Ooooh. Here is the after-math. I had too many candles on the table, Emily was stuffing tissue back into a bag, and suddenly we had a problem, Houston. We were thankful we had a fire extinguisher and even more thankful that we knew where it was. It took care of things right quick but did make an awful mess. The stuff went right through the table cloth and covered every surface in the house. It's sodium bicarbonate so not toxic and should be easy to clean up. We did a quick job last night and the rest will get done today. Nothing was damaged, nobody was hurt, and I learned a lesson: Go easy on the candles when you have a houseful of people and flammable stuff.

Regis was good in the crisis as his first thought was to get Ella out of the house. My first reaction was to run around flapping my arms. In fact, I think I ran over by the Christmas tree which was not the best place to go. I did eventually tell someone to get the fire extinguisher, Regis got it open and took care of the flames, and we sprang into action to clear the room of smoke and clean up what we could. Regis said he would like to thank the person who gave us the fire extinguisher, so if it was you, consider yourself thanked. If you don't have one at your house, use your Christmas money and go buy yourself one.