Christmas tie

This is the most appropriate Christmas tie there is.
On our way to church Christmas morning.

The last roll of the first side

I am so excited to see the batting and back at this end of the quilt. It has been a long time coming. Although, I must admit I have not spent as much time working on it as I such on a consistent basis. I hope is that I can do the half of all the squares across the edge before the Christmas company arrives.This year Southern California is the destination of most of the Hart - Webb family. curtis and Christine come in on Thursday December 22. Marjorie and James will drive if the weather allows. They will get here on the 22nd also. Grandma and Martin are coming Christmas Eve for the week between Christmas and New Years. This room will become someone's bedroom for that time. The quilt will have to go up against the wall like last October when Grandma came.

Now I must get off the computer and get busy shopping for Kourtney's birthday, other Christmas shopping and getting the house ready. Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we avoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the Nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of Peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

I thought this was interesting. It was written October 3 1863, 3 months after the Battle of Gettysburg. It establishes Thanksgiving as a day of gratitude. There is no mention of food.