Suprisingly, I remained calm and cool yesterday morning. It happened again... I was steadily typing my diary entry and down to the end of it where I usually put the Thought Of The Day when POOF! AOL decided to quit on me and I lost the entire entry. Grrrrrr!!!

I am feeling very good this morning. Feeling good for being so organized. I have all my Christmas cards sitting here on the desk beside me ready to be mailed out today. And, it's not even December yet. (Well, not until tomorrow anyway!) :-)

So, we have our tree up and the Christmas cards are done and I believe Ben and I are going to try to buy some Christmas gifts today. We'll be seeing my family up north in Virginia first, so we'll probably buy those gifts first. And, when we get up there it'll be my brother's 12th birthday. I'm probably going to buy him a birthday gift today as well.

Being organized as I am, I have found that the best way to do Christmas is to write a list. I'm serious. I write down a few possible items I'd like to get each person that is on the list and then we go to the malls and get one or two from the list. If we are extra organized, we even set a spending limit and estimate the cost of the items on the list and stick pretty much to that. This year we're even MORE on top of the game because we're going to be paying cash for all of our purchases. I didn't want to put us further into credit card debt. Ben worked so many hours of overtime that we can actually pay with cash this year! YAY!

Don't get me wrong, we're not going to go overboard and buy tons of stuff just because we have a little extra cash; that's not the reason for the season or the meaning of Christmas. But, it will be nice to buy a few gifts for our family and friends.

I hope this Christmas season is extra special, extra merry and extra bright for all of you!

Thought Of The Day: "The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give." --Walt Whitman, poet

Thought Of The Day #2: "To have and not to give is often worse than to steal." -- Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, writer

Until next time... peace, love & HEALTH!!!