Without Asking

My mission to get all my Christmas decorations down from their resting place concluded without a shot fired from my well-planned armory. My oldest daughter and her husband came over Monday night (just in time for dinner :) and said they wanted to help us get the decorations downstairs without me asking. I was pleasantly surprised! My mind started thinking that I hadn't even made the chocolate dessert that was to entice and behold my chocoholics (the other three) to my well-laid plans to interject the Christmas spirit into the drudgery of dragging down boxes! However, my oldest daughter is not a chocoholic and her husband just likes food, so steak, sweet potatoes, and a fresh salad was good enough for them. Is this what it's like to have grown kids? Just showing up to help out the parents? I'm liking it, believe me, even though it has been hard to accept the constant change in my household from children to teenagers to college students to married children. I used to tell my girls that they would one day pay rent for the "nine months" of incubation I gave them. This is a great start! :)

So, now my house is in pleasant chaos - I'm using that term for my own sanity. Boxes and boxes of Christmas "stuff" is strewn around my living and dining room. The Christmas tree stands in its place, naked and cold, calling out to be adorned in holiday splendor, but there's just not a moment for that yet. Maybe tomorrow. My world is tilted to the extreme right now!

Our bathroom is under major repair, not because we just have extra money and decided to redo it. When shower tiles start falling off the walls without asking, well, that's not a good thing. The water damage behind those tiles was atrocious, so I guess if you look at it that way, the rebel tiles actually did us a favor! So, our Christmas this year is a nice newly-tiled shower, freshly painted bathroom, and let's just throw in some new flooring while we're at it. Ho, ho, ho!

Thanks, shower tiles for revealing the problem behind the walls (there's got to be a spiritual implication here) and thanks, Shell and Frank, for helping me out "without me asking" to get my Christmas decorations down!

I'm wondering if I do enough for people without them having to ask me?