yep....there is fire. Last night Les was cooking chicken for the girls since I am still recovering from food poisoning (no, I won't describe my last 36 hours...aren't you glad?) Not sure how it happened but all of a sudden the house is filling with smoke and the pan of chicken is on fire. Les is trying to put it out...I am getting the fire extinguisher while hollering for the girls to close the hall door (sometimes having an open floor plan sucks).

So the end of the story is that with clean up it looks like we only have smoke damage to the upper cabinet finish. (I want to paint them anyway.)

So that is the most exciting thing I have done in the past little bit.

The rest of the week has been finishing up Christmas and wrapping presents. Funny, Christie is so like me in many ways and Kate like her father that when they switch it is striking. As we were wrapping, I noticed that Katie (like me) was obsessing over the absolute necessity of having perfectly square corners on the package. Christie was telling her how little that mattered. I was reminded of early in Les and my relationship when on that first Christmas he brought my gift over and by the next time he came over I had rewrapped it. (You should have seen THOSE corners!) When we unwrapped gifts and he looked for mine under my tree I had to admit I had rewrapped them. He looked at me and simply said, "If you ever do that again it will be the last gift I ever give you."

No, I have never done that again...but there have been times when I have asked him if I could neaten them up a bit. So now, I know why he gets Kate to wrap all my gifts!