My New Adult Coloring Book

Well, it’s over. Christmas was glorious! I just love my family and the way we do things for our celebration of Jesus’ Birthday. It’s a sweet memory that I would like to share just a little bit of with my readers.

Since there are only four of us (my husband, our daughter, her husband and yours truly), we gave each other 30 gifts. That’s a total of 120 gifts to be opened Christmas Eve. But, I will mention before it’s thought that we go TOTALLY overboard… the gifts are not all expensive. For example, my daughter gave my husband a large pack of paper towels, a box of 16 Keurig k-cups, a six-pack of protein bars, etc., in addition to about three really, really, really nice gifts. The same pattern applied to all our gifts to each other. (One of my gifts from my daughter was a small jar of artichoke hearts, which I LOOOOOVE!)

Now, since my daughter and I do almost all the gift-shopping, we know what almost everything is… even our own gifts, most of which we often buy for ourselves from our spouses. So, what we did was make crazy labels, and made it a competitive game for our husbands against each other.

For example: To Carl (our son-in-law), From Tozy Toes Claus. (It was a pair of slippers.) To Dad from Sleepy Time Claus (a pair of pajamas). To Daniel from Gooey Chewy Claus (his favorite candy bar). To Daniel from Lookin’ Buff Claus (a year membership to gym). To Carl from Sneezin’ n’ Sniffin’ Claus (allergy meds). To Carl from Bass and Treble Claus (a keyboard that hooks up to his computer).  Even though my daughter and I didn’t participate in the game, we did the same with our gifts. To DanniLaii from Fat Cat Claus (a picture of a big fat-faced black cat for her bathroom). To Mom from Vast Knowledge Claus (3 feet of cloth green spined books for me to decorate with). To DanniLaii from Fuzzy Wuzzy Claus (a pair of fuzzy knee boots for winter). Well… I think you get the idea.

Even with 30 gifts each, our son-in-law won by a score of only 10 to 9. It was just riotous fun! And, our son-in-law walked off the winner of the wagered twenty dollars. Both of them are incredibly competitive, so if you were to pin them down, they’d probably have to both admit they’d tried to cheat. Carl was just better at it!

Now that the wonderful celebration is over, and the ridiculous amounts of food consumed, I am preparing to use one of my gifts today for the first time. My husband is downstairs watching…. football, of course! So, I am going to sit by the fireplace next to him and color in my adult coloring book. The picture at the top is not from my coloring book, but it is typical of the pages in my book. Coloring is supposed to be very cathartic, so I’m giving it a shot!

On Tuesday, January 2nd, however, I will be yet again viciously attacking the writing of my newest writing endeavor, From Grace Abounds Grace. And, if the coloring book works, I should be calmed down and ready to focus on it.

Blessings and Happy New Year, My Friends!