Right before Christmas my mother decided that she wanted me to accompany her to a fantastic display up at the Shenandoah Caverns. The display was of historical parade floats, and antique
Christmas window displays from storefronts.

Having always been fascinated by things like that, I readily agreed, although I would have preferred doing it after Christmas. Nonetheless, we went up there and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the window displays. One of the things that I really appreciated was the fact that the main room of the window displays was decorated with artificial flowering wisteria hanging from garden arbors.

The effect of the flowers climbing the arbors was very effective, and it made the entire room feel charming and romantic and old fashioned. The display has inspired me to put an arbor on my “wish list” for the landscaping plans for the side yard of the house.

Don’t get me wrong, they are all great vacation spots; I’m sure that a lot of people go there and have a lot of fun. But when I go on vacation I tend to go visit family, and they don’t live near any fantastic tourist spot that is going to offer great cheap rates on any kind of travel, whether it is last minute or not. In fact, the closer the travel date, the more expensive the tickets seem to be. Sometimes I miss the days of my youth when I would just throw my sleeping bag in the back of my station wagon, grab some maps and drive south until I reached someplace that seemed interesting. I looked at life like it was one great big adventure back then. I’m no longer interested in roughing it any more than staying in a five star hotel!

She was the director, and my boyfriend and I were the stars of the show. The scene started in one of the bigger neighborhood parks. At the time it was supposed to be a romantic comedy of boy chases girl to steal a kiss. Thinking about that, nowadays that would be a scary stalker movie! The video starts out with the female star (me) sitting in a covered shelter filled with Picnic Tables. I was eating an apple while reading a book. My boyfriend sneaked up behind me, tapped me on my shoulder and when I turned around he plants a kiss on my lips! Then I slapped him across his cheek and started to run. And he started to chase. The chase was in the style of the Keystone Cops. We ran over top of Park Benches, through the various forms of playground equipment, going down slides, ended up running out into the neighborhood and “stealing” bicycles and tricycles to continue the chase.

Of course it all sounds so lame, but when my family sees that video, the room rocks with peals of laughter at our silliness. Sometimes a walk down memory lane can be good fun.

Heather wants a gold necklace with a heart on it.  Imagine that, that’s what I was going to get her to begin with.  Dawn wants a ring.  She doesn’t care what is on it, she just wants a ring so I thought about getting her a birthstone ring.  Her birthday is in June.  I’m not sure what stone that is but I’ll find out.  She has such small hands that it’s going to be hard to get the right size.

Amanda wants an MP3 player.  That’s about the easiest gift on any one’s list.  Carley wants a PSP.  Go figure.  She would have had a cow if I had gotten the boys one and not her.  Then there’s Nicole.  She wants money, just money and lots of it.  So she’s getting a Visa gift card for some money but not lots of it.

The main problem with the girls is I’ll have to go to a jewelry store for some of the things but with the others, I found them online and they’re on their way here as we speak.  With that, that takes care of all my nieces and nephews.

Christmas is getting really close though, and I’m starting to panic that I’m not going to be getting any great ideas on gifts for those hard to shop for people. I hate to be copping out by giving them gift cards, but I’m starting to think that is what I am going to have to do!