It's THAT Time of Year Again!

Now stop that! I will not have any eye rolling going on out there. Any of you who know me KNOW that mid August begins the Christmas season around here. No, the decorations aren't up, but the shopping has begun, I'm stressing over the Christmas card pictures and I'm beginning to draft The Christmas Letter. Some years we have done such neat things, gone places, seen people, had adventures, that The Christmas Letter just flies off the keys. This is NOT one of those years. I'm going over the year in my head and what comes to mind is that basically we didn't do squat this year. Yes, we went to Maine and had a blast, but that about sums up the excitement for the year. I suppose I could ramble on at length about the water shortage in North Carolina. Hmmm...

The Christmas Cards are yet another adventure in stress. I am a member of an online cat group, and an online dog group. Both groups have a card exchange for those who are interested, and it's really one of my favorite things about the holidays. The cat people for the most part send a generic card with a cat on it. The dog people are far more creative, and those cards almost always feature pictures of the list members canine family members. Herein lies the problem. While the cats are MORE than willing to pose cutely for pictures, Ms. Harley the dog is NOT particularly pleased about having a camera lens perched at the end of her snout. Ms. Harley is not an active dog. Ms. Harley does not caper cutely for pictures. Ms. Harley pretty much just sleeps on the sofa. I just took a picture of her doing that. She looks like road kill. ::sigh::

Ahh it's mid September. It's still 95 degrees and humid outside, but how can the mind NOT turn to Christmas? Let the madness begin!