Tuesday, December 18, 2012

...and the Grinch was right! Christmas means more.



"And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so? It came without ribbons! It came without tags! "It came without packages, boxes or bags!" And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! "Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. "Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"
 
...and the Grinch was right!

Christmas isn’t about the parties and tasty treats
or how many gifts are under the tree. 

The real meaning of Christmas is Jesus Christ of course.

On Christmas, we honor the birth of Jesus Christ our Savior,
the greatest gift that God could send to us.

It's the perfect time to reflect on God’s goodness and grace
and knowing how wonderfully we have been blessed. 

Christmas is a time for love and forgiveness,
it’s a time to remember your family and friends.

Christmas is about giving not receiving.
it’s about serving and caring for those less fortunate.

Christmas is about putting the needs of others before your own,
it's about making sure that at Christmas time, no one is alone. 

Enjoy the Christmas spirit by spreading the Christmas cheer
and let’s all celebrate that Jesus Christ came to earth.


MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Thursday, December 6, 2012

“Christmas sale!!” Buy my books online.



Christmas is quickly approaching, the malls and outlets are swamped with shoppers, and you are running out of time and have no idea what to get. Well, let me remind you that a book makes a great holiday gift and you can get them in the comfort of your own home, the best part is that it is stress free. Until December 25, you can find my books on sale, and they are just a click away.   To buy the books just click on the title.
 
If you like vampires, demons, angels, or ghosts... the following titles are available in digital format or paperback through Amazon and Barnes & Noble online. 
 

 
Butterfly Kisses

Purple Moon

Now you see me, now you don't

Do you have children on your list? Check out Molly and help her find her cheese or follow Baba through the zoo.


Where is my cheese?


Baba - Trip to the Zoo
 
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and
thank you for supporting my books.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

We found our Charlie Brown tree!


This is a follow up to my previous blog, “Ever thought of getting an ugly Christmas tree?” Well, we did, after visiting four different places; we finally found our Charlie Brown tree.

We left home early morning with a list of things to do, eye doctor appointment, haircuts for the boys, grocery shopping and lastly, buy a real Christmas tree. 

When we finished with the first errands, we decided to go check the Christmas trees. The first lot we went to, the attendant person said that we were the fifth customer that had stopped by there asking for a Charlie Brown tree. I didn’t know there was a trend for this. Well, we looked around but didn’t see any ugly trees; they were all perfect to me. We left and drove around to the other two places, and every time they asked us what type of tree, we were looking for. We would ask for an ugly tree. The faces of the attendants at the nursery lots, were priceless, and then followed by the same question, “why?”

They didn’t understand our reasoning, so we walked around and found a few candidates for our Charlie Brown tree, but they weren’t ugly enough, so we didn’t get any of those trees. We left, I was about to give up. I didn’t know it was so hard to find an ugly Christmas tree. I was tired of driving around, and walking in between the aisles of 100s of Christmas trees in search of our Charlie Brown. I pulled to the lot and parked the Jeep, this was going to be our last stop of the day. I turned to look at my boys, they didn’t look too happy that we had more walking to do and to top it off, it has just started to rain. It would have been perfect if it had been snow to put us in the Christmas spirit, but Houston welcomed December with temperatures in the low 80’s and scattered showers, so it was more of a Christmas gloom.

We walked in and within a few minutes of walking around, my son found our Charlie Brown tree. Leaning to a post was a 5ft Oregon grown Noble Fir. My son pulled the tree out so that I could take a better look. “Yeap! That’s our Charlie.” I said.

The tree trunk was curved with messy branches, more in one side than on the other, it looked like it had just woken up with a bad case of bed head. The attendant couldn’t understand why we were picking that one, but he helped us carry it to the cashier. We paid for it and had them nail the wooden stand with the pail for the water under the tree. After they installed it, they stood it up and the tree was leaning to the left. The lady in front of us turned around to see to whom that funny looking tree belonged to, there I stood proudly with my sons, grinning like a fool, I was happy because that awkward tree belonged to me. The attendants saw that the tree was still leaning too much to one side and thought they were doing us a favor and nailed wooden stakes as braces to hold it up straighter, when in reality we didn’t care if it was leaning, that’s why we picked it.

We took the tree home. The tree was too small to put in the corner that we normally put our Christmas tree, you could hardly see it because the furniture was blocking it. We moved the furniture around and finally found a place for it by a window next to the stairs.

Now, it was time for the ornaments. Well, I have three plastic containers full of ornaments; I only ended up using like half of one, because I had to choose the ornaments very carefully, since most of them were too heavy for the wimpy tree branches. I even thought that our star topper was going to be too heavy for the scrawny tree, but it wasn’t, so we left the star on because it looks even funnier with it. The scrawny tree has been nicknamed by my boys as “Charlie.” It is the prettiest ugly tree we’ve ever had, and we are very happy to it show-off, —one look at our Charlie Brown tree and it makes you grin.  

Here is our Christmas tree last year.


…and here is our Charlie Brown tree. Before and after.


This year, we proudly gave this awkward looking 5ft Noble Fir a home for the holidays.


Welcome home, Charlie! And Merry Christmas to All!