December 22. Thursday Night.

Hi Journey.

One important thing to do to make it easier living in transit tomorrow: buy slippers. I've just a quick layover at O'Hare, but I'm crammed way back in the back of the plane between there and LGA. Kicking off my shoes and nestling my toes into a pair of slipper mocs for an hour and a half will be just the break they need.

Finished up buying the kids' presents. Baseball gloves for the twins, and a brand new comb and brush and make-up mirror for Cora. For Dad I ordered a new Jaguar key fob. I thought about asking Dakota to see if she could pick me one up on the cheap, but only for a moment. For Carm and Percy I bought a little house number light. It's solar, and they can just stick it in their front yard to make their address easier to read at night.

Of course, Mom's always the toughest to buy for. This year the three of us girls pitched in and bought her a Kodak picture viewer so she can carry around photos of the grandkids digitally. If I know Dad, he'll go down and start scanning in old photos from their albums so they have a couple dozen of us Trino girls when we were little to tote around and share and compare with their friends down there in Florida .

Carm's idea, of course. I would have racked my brains for two weeks and still came up with nothing Mom liked.

Today we had our gift exchange at CD. Shelly's agreed to man the phones tomorrow afternoon; I told everybody else to just come in for the morning and then leave after lunch. All of our clients are too busy baking and buying to worry about remodeling.

They all pitched in and handed me a $250 gift certificate to Atlas Awning to go towards installation of a brand new awning over our front door. Joni hinted that we just might be getting enough from our smoke damage insurance claim to be able to have the awning up by the end of January.

For once, I didn't know what to say.

Nothing else tonight, Journey. Looking forward to seeing the family. Goodnight.

Read December 25th entry.

Read December 20th entry.