Timely Christmas Gifts

Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.

 

After all that Christmas shopping it comes time to mail those packages.  Actually, that’s not always as easy as you might think especially if you’re going to the post office.  We’ve been in those lines.  Some are very, very long just before the holidays.

It’s not just the standing in line.  There’s the preparation for shipping.  First, you need to figure out the size of the shipping box, padding and tape.  You also need to be timely.  Mail services have cut off dates if you need that package to arrive before Christmas.

The good thing about it this year is we didn’t have so much to mail.  Sometimes we were frequent customers of FedEx.  Sometimes we would check packages with us on an airplane.   We’d just put them in a box and figure the packages would arrive the same time we did.  However, after my experience last year flying back from the holidays and checking luggage, I doubt I will ever count on a package making it when I do.  If it does, I’ll be happy.  If it doesn’t, I certainly know the process and will start replacing items faster than I did last December.  Remember I rarely, rarely check anything …. this time Southwest took my suitcase but never returned it.

Sunday we were ready to send our packages via Santa Claus Express.  With only a few days before Christmas, we weren’t about to send them via ground mail.  Besides we wouldn’t want to.  This way they’ll get there a few days early to allow for little flukes in transportation but not too early.  One box was going to Florida for Justin and the other box was going to Arizona for Terry’s folks.  FedEx normally isn’t open on Sundays but it  was this Sunday and we beat the crowd.  They were at the door and coming in as we left.  Packages will fly out on Monday and be delivered on Wednesday – we hope.  At least that’s the plan.  It’s the 2-day plan.

After staying two nights at Tammi’s we moved to Lee’s house Sunday.  We also checked out a couple decorated homes with Christmas lights.  We used to set aside a night each Christmas when the kids were little to ride through areas with lots of Christmas lights.  A very popular area in Portland is Peacock Lane.  It was popular then and still is popular today.  Every house on that street is decorated to a “T”.  The lines of vehicles viewing are long and slow.  It’s a spectacular show of homes decorated for the holidays.

‘Tis just life on the road.