home from the holidays

best holiday wishes to all!

we had a fabulous christmas - drove up to jacksonville to visit my son and daughter-in-law. this spring they will be stationed in pensacola, and i will really miss jacksonville, especially the avondale area.

the day before we left i got a second wind, and dd and i baked up a storm.

my aunt millie's hazelnut crescents.

fudge filled toffee kisses, or as my ddil calls them - cookies on crack :->

apricot kolache, my czech grandmother's recipe.

magic cookie bars .

christmas morning time for presents!

look at what my friend terri made for me! a lovely smooth wooden swift. is she unbelievably talented or what! the swift spins as smooth as buttah :-) i love you terri!

bart likes his mountain colors bearfoot socks.

dd loves her new mittens and river scarf.

but i think she loves natalie the best!

tom is dapper in his new rowanspun aran sweater. it's rosemary's middle sweater from the green mountain spinnery book.

natalie put together a heartfelt collage for tom. it has a photo of tom and bart from bart's college graduation, a thank you poem, and a drawing of the P3-Orion, the plane bart flies, and the F4-Phantom, the plane tom flew when he was in the navy.
tom said he had to wipe the tears from his eyes, but being a manly man, he didn't want to blubber in public ;-)

tom is obsessed with osho the man constantly surprises me, luckily santa brought him plenty of osho books.

and a nice post osho nap.

my ddil, natalie, is a girl who really appreciates a handknit present. no wonder i love her so much!

koigu socks, toe up, picot edge.

seaweed scarf and mittens in sea ivory.

looking gorgeous in rogue! knit with jamieson's soft shetland in dragonfly discontinued color.

is there a girl in the world who wouldn't be thrilled to open a little blue box on christmas morning?

then dd totally surprised me.

look at this mother daughter book. she took photos of the two of us, from her babyhood through today, and added poems and quotes about mothers and daughters. the last page is a letter she wrote just for me.

they do not call me sap-mother for nothing. i could not stop crying, and i cried more with every page i turned. by the end there wasn't a dry eye in the house!

am i the luckiest mom in the world, or what!

my grand-dogs, aisling and earl.