The tree is decorated...

...I've taken a few pictures, I finished shopping, and now I just have wrapping... which is more complicated than it sounds, but more about that another day.

Meanwhile, the lovely Monique-aka-Surferwife23 has given me an award. It comes with tasks--tell 10 things that make me happy and then pass it on to 10 others. I'm gonna do the first part today, so here goes:

Ten Things That Make Me Happy (and I'm not going to count the grandkids; that seems too easy):

1. Getting my first blog award--thanks, Surferwife!

2. Strawberry limoncello martinis. Olive Garden makes 'em, and now so does my husband. I'll post his recipe some day soon.

3. All by itself, limoncello Italian liqueur is nice, too. I'm sipping it right now.

4. Joni Mitchell's "I Wish I had a River"--it's so wonderfully melancholy. The first time I heard it, it was being sung by the Robert Downey Jr. character on Ally McBeal (the first hint that he was going to leave her, if I remember right). I actually had a little crush on that character. Sigh.

5. The smell of sugared almonds that fills one of the malls here at Christmas, and the taste of them when we bring home a couple of jumbo bags.

6. The fact that our daughter Abby dropped off a sample of her own home-made sugared almonds this morning, on her way to work.

7. Pioneer Woman. Her approach to cooking is encouraging and fun, her cookbook is a best-seller, her posts from the book tour showed how much she loves people, and her romantic stories about Marlboro Man and their kids are heartwarming. I used to think she was the Martha Stewart of the west, but if she turns out to be the next Oprah, you heard it here first.

8. With our grandkids, riding the carousel that we saved, and which we operate at Como Park in St. Paul. I'll tell that story some day.

9. Knowing that the book we coauthored with longtime baseball man Wayne Terwilliger is a good piece of work, that it's in the Library of Congress, and that it's still available on Amazon. That's another story I haven't told here.

10. Working only half-time and, truth be told, looking forward to retirement. There is so much I want to do outside of work, and I think it's coming within view.

So that's my list...as soon as I post I'll think of 10 more things, I'm sure. I still have to pass along the award, but I'm saving that for another day.