Post Category → fiona

Christmas bits

Christmas Eve morning was calm, blue, serene:

…and then the sun broke through.

It continued to shine all through Christmas Day. Crazy cold, crisp and clear. The best of winter in the North Country.

We all gathered under one roof for an early dinner. We dressed into our holiday best and went to church for a lovely hour of choral music, hymn-singing, story reading, and candles. Jameson read beautifully.

Then home. We lit all the candles, ate cookies and homemade eggnog, and let the holiday music ring. Ryan read Luke’s account of Christmas, and then we opened a gift or two. Including, of course, new pj’s. These growing kids were in desperate need this year!

Then Christmas morning: the biggest boy crawling into my bed before the sun was up, me telling him we’ll at least wait until the 6 o’clock hour, and him asking me every 3 minutes for the next 45 if it was time yet? Please??

Stockings, presents, jumping and joy. Cinnamon rolls and clementines. Then over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house! Or just down the road to Nana and Papa’s. Either way, we sang as we went.


in the van; she couldn’t leave the house without purse and hat, of course!

The celebrating was merry, the food delicious, and being almost all together the best of all. We gathered again the next evening and ate pizza and sang more songs:

No celebration of this marvelous event could ever be too big, Dad said, and he is so right. A Savior came to deliver us. To walk among us. To reconcile and redeem. That’s worth a bit of celebrating!

And so we do.

But eventually we must find our coats and mittens, run out into the cold, starlit night, and turn towards home and bed.

first week of december doings.

Ryan took the boys out one afternoon, and they strung pretty white lights around the lone tree in our yard. When it shines at night, so solitary in a snow-white, moonlit field, it’s just so pretty.

In this picture, Jameson appears to be sweeping the snow away. He’s got a long way to go:

*****

Cookies are what it’s all about, right? Rum logs are happily consumed at every moment that seems at all appropriate.

Beatrice longs for a cookie:

*****

There are pre-dawn book-reading moments that happen quite regularly. The basket of Christmas books gets heftier every year.

*****

The boys had their CFA Christmas Concert this past Friday evening. William was bursting with excitement over his “very first concert ever in his whole life!!!!!” I will be honest: I was not feeling the Christmas “magic” last week, but did my best to remember how exciting that Friday evening concert always was to me as a child. With that in mind, I made sure to carve out plenty of time to iron clothes, straighten ties, wrap scarves, and say in as many ways as I could, “Hey! This is a big deal!” And they had the best night. (Seeing life through someone else’s eyes sure helps a lot, doesn’t it?)

mud pies and gold mines.

I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of the dirt around here. Mine, theirs — all of it.

That’s not a faith perspective.

It’s just far too easy for me to see all the dirt and start feeling like I’m working in a pig pen instead of a gold mine. That I’m wallowing in mud instead of digging a foundation.

The dirt really is there. It’s not a figment of my imagination, or gross exaggeration by a melancholy idealist — I’m a mess, they’re a mess, we’re all a mess. But how will I respond?

Will I simply marvel all the more at a glorious Savior who redeemed me? Will I see the dirt for what it is — and thrill at the faintest glimmer of gold?

While we were yet sinners, Christ died. He wasn’t deterred or overwhelmed by dirt. Not even a whole-world-full.

I want to be like that.

I want to be like Jesus.

*****

One of my favorite people, full of gold to be discovered:

20131202-215013.jpg

20131202-215023.jpg

thanks, from me to You.

20131127-212038.jpg

Here we are, on the eve of a wonderful celebration. A day to stop and just say, Thank You. What a gift this day is, in and of itself!

In recent years it’s struck me that being thankful is very “on trend.” It’s kind of popular. But somehow, somewhere in its rise to fame, Thankful has become synonymous with Positive Thoughts.

That’s not what it means, I tell my children.

Thankfulness inherently is an acknowledgement of two parties: you, the recipient, and another, the giver. And being thankful without acknowledging the giver is rather like mailing a thank you card with no address.

Thankfulness is a chance to remember who we are and where we stand. It’s an invitation to embrace humility. And joy.

So I ponder this. Tomorrow, I want to respond to that invitation. I don’t want to simply look around me, take note of the good things I enjoy, and proceed to feel good. I want to treat thanksgiving as what it is: a chance to humbly say, All I am, all I have, the very breath I breathe, is a gift. A gift from a Giver.

Now thank we all our God
With heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done,
In whom the world rejoices.
Who from our mothers’ arms
Has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love
And still is ours today.

*****

Moments of blessing far beyond what I deserve (what joy and freedom!):

20131127-212114.jpg

20131127-212127.jpg

20131127-212137.jpg