It is Limerick Friday again and in honor of the fast approaching holiday I give you Young Elliott's Woes.

Hear the tale of young Elliott Hocking
Who remembers a Christmas quite shocking
His sins were laid bare
By the gifts that weren't there
And the coal that he found in his stocking

Yes, little children...the list is real...and Santa does check it twice. Just ask Elliott Hocking.

Speaking of lists...we have some friends at church who have started a naughty and nice list for retailers. It's called ChristmasMerchants.com and lists both those businesses who acknowledge the holiday as Christmas instead of some winter celebration and those businesses who refuse to accept the reality of Christmas, and encourages shoppers to make their purchases at the former. Check it out if you get a chance.

Amber and I had a little mini-sewing party on Tuesday evening and I made our boy's first stockings. Kris and I still do not have any stockings, but we are not too upset by that...we would have to fill them ourselves anyway. I'd like to crochet some fun little stockings and have a bit of an idea in my head, but it will take some time. I'll have to work on that another month. These stockings came about because Ivan fell in love with the little train stocking holders as we passed them at Target. He got very excited. Having spoken to Kris briefly about doing stockings one of these years I went ahead with the purchase and of course in doing so committed to getting stockings to go with them. When Amber showed up Tuesday evening she brought along her embroidery machine and that sealed it for me. I had to make stockings. So, with a little fake green suede I had on hand and a little black ribbon I found in a box, and the help of Amber's handy machine...we now have personalized stockings for the boys. I finished them after the boys were in bed which made it even more fun. Owen has been suggesting all sorts of things to put in them but finally looked at me shrewdly the other day and said, "I know what you're going to do. You're going to put stuff in them after we go to bed the night before Christmas and we'll be able to find gifts in them when we wake up Christmas morning."

Isn't he clever? Cracks me up.