New Sheltie puppy

A new sheltie puppy is our daughter and son in law to be's new dog. He is about 2 and one half months old. Beautiful colouring and already on his way to becoming the grown up dog he will eventually be. He is very quick and already responds to a number of commands. They are busy training him to be part of their already large family which includes a 12 year old chihuahua and a one year old Norwegian Lap Rabbit. I am sure that they will perform the final training for this energetic puppy. At the moment they regard his high jinks with boredom from their lofty elderly ages!

Very busy with Christmas so that I really haven't accomplished very much in genealogy. I did a few entries for Bishops Nympton records and carried on a short email conversation with regard to the records for North Molton. I have a keen interest in North Molton as well because my Tapp, Burges and other families were there. I gave my transcription of the Protestation Returns for North and South Molton to the OPC there. Although I originally wanted them for my Pincombe one name study they have since proved to be very valuable looking at all of my lines in Witheridge. I shall be very glad that I took the several days to put that together as a tool for my family research.

Today I shall make the Christmas Stollen. We will cut it Christmas Eve after Church and enjoy it with a glass of wine to celebrate the coming of the Christ Child into our lives. As I age, I find that I think more about the religious side of Christmas than the commercial side. Usually we just buy whatever presents our children want and take them with us to make sure they are the right size, right colour, etc. It is just so much easier than taking anything back. This year my husband and I treated each other to a 37 inch flat screen television. We are enjoying it already and will spend many many hours watching our favourite movies on it. I used to buy several videos and later DVDs a week (usually on special) of all the movies that we enjoy. As a result we have about 1000 VCRs and about 200 DVDs. We purchased several VCRs so that we would have a machine to watch them with after DVDs became so popular! Amazing that such a new technology is already obsolete.

Under our tree thus far we have the goodies that we usually purchase - tins of cookies, nuts and candies that we all enjoy. We usually open one a day through the holiday season although they tend to last longer than one day. It is the only time of year that we purchase such rich foods but there are usually a sufficient number of people to help us eat them up. On to the Stollen making......