22 down, 3 to Go!

Day 22, closing in!

I confess I am not feeling it today. Work has me down, but I am going to try and take off (sort of) tomorrow. At least I am not planning on coming in to work. Maybe that will help. I am putting Matthew’s rule “we do what has to be done” into effect, followed by a healthy dose of focus on the positive. . . Anyway, here we go!

In 2003 Kathleen’s parents moved to Oklahoma City. The first Christmas they were here they had just moved into their house, and were still getting things fixed up. The following year we had Christmas day with them. Over Thanksgiving we had ‘broken in’ the new table in their formal dining room. At that meal Nolen had made a proclamation that THIS table was the family table, and it is where we would eat important family meals, holidays, special occasions, celebrations for our family. It is a lovely table, big, ornate, and can expand and seat up to 20 or something extreme like that.

At Christmas that year, as we sat down to eat our Christmas meal the table looked great, Elisa had purchased new table linens that fit this new table and they were gorgeous. Her china on the new table linens was a place setting worthy of a magazine photo shoot. The table looked great, and food smelled heavenly.

After we held hands and blessed the food, Elisa asked 3 year old Matthew to please remember NOT to wipe his nose on his shirtsleeve. He assured her that he would not. Matthew sits across from me at this table, and his Grandmother sits between us at one end of the table. All through the meal I watched Matthew carefully and he was good to his word, not once did he wipe his nose on his sleeve.

After the meal I remarked to Kathleen that we should turn that Christmas dinner in to the “Priceless” commercial people.

New dining room table? $1600

Brand new table linens? $65

Seeing your son wipe his nose on the new table linens unbeknownst to his Gramma?

PRICELESS