I’ve enjoyed talking a couple of days to skim back over the posts of each month. I wish I had done so before writing our Christmas letter — there were some things I had forgotten about! But I like how these encapsulate the different things I focus on in my blog: meditations on Scriptural truth, family, books, and fun posts.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas week! Ours was very nice.
I thought I’d share with you just a few tidbits from the past week.
When we came back from our anniversary trip, Jeremy has already offered to make dinner that evening, and Jason and Mittu surprised us with balloons, a cake, some plastic goblets (I didn’t know they made such a thing), and “sparkling” grape juice. We had never really had an anniversary celebration at home before — having a girl in the family adds a new dimension! Not to fault the boys, though. They were used to us just going out to eat that day and only a couple of times over the years going somewhere overnight. But that was a nice surprise.
One of our silly little traditions on our anniversary is to put a card under each others’ pillow and then read them together before we go to bed. Somehow even though I bought family Christmas cards specifically before we left so the store selection wouldn’t be all picked over or all gone by the time we came back, I totally forgot about an anniversary card. I thought I might sneak out Monday morning before we left, but it ended up being so late before I was ready to go, I didn’t want to take the time, and there was no way to do it sneakily. So I thought maybe I’d find something in a little shop along the way. Nope. The places we went to didn’t have any and the places that might have had them weren’t open. So that evening in the hotel I was trying to decide what to do. I hated not having a card at all, though I knew Jim would understand. While he was on the phone with the kids I looked around and found the hotel stationery….so I wrote my little note for our 30th anniversary on that. 😳 At least having the image and name of the hotel on it made it somewhat commemorative. I was especially thankful then that I had posted my 30 things I love about my husband that morning!
Our church always has a Christmas Eve service, understanding that everyone can’t come because some have their family celebrations then. I had had to go to the store that day and then had multitudes of wrapping to do and was chafing just a little about going. But I always enjoy it once I get there. Our music director’s daughter and her husband were in town and they did a sacred concert for us: she plays the cello and he is working on a PhD in something to do with classical piano. The cello is my all-time favorite instrument. It was lovely: a nice, peaceful time to stop and reflect.
The service itself was at 5 p.m. — kind of an odd time — I guess they were trying as much as possible not to interfere with anyone’s evening plans. But we ended up going out to eat afterward at Fatz Cafe. I wouldn’t mind making that a regular Christmas Eve tradition. 😀
Christmas Day was very nice with Jason, Mittu, and Grandma coming over. The Christmas story, presents, and what has become our traditional breakfast of Sister Shubert sausage wraps, cinnamon rolls, and sliced, cooked apples with cinnamon and sugar, then naps, puttering around with Christmas presents, dinner, naps, a couple of movies on TV, and time with family in between. A very restful day.
No after-Christmas shopping for me on Saturday! I went into one store looking for something I had seen advertised before Christmas in the hopes that they might still have it, but no such luck, and the crowdedness and lines reminded me why I don’t go shopping on that day.
Mittu and Jason had a little get-together Saturday night with us and a family from church they are close to whose daughters worked with them at Castlepoint. One daughter attends college in FL and one teaches in CA, and they were both in town, so it was a nice time of visiting. We played Pit, which was my first time playing. I had always thought, looking on, that it was a noisy, confusing game, but in the midst of it, it’s fun.
Today was a fairly normal Sunday. I have the ladies’ booklet to work on this week — I don’t know quite how that will work with everyone home, but I’ve been praying about it! We’re really looking forward to New Year’s Eve at Jason and Mittu’s. I grew up in a family that had fireworks regularly and I’ve chafed at our city’s restriction of them. But Jason and Mittu live outside the city limits! So we kind of invited ourselves over to do fireworks then. We’re not so much into the ones that just make noise: one of my all time favorite ones we had ages ago were little tanks that would send off little sparkles as they traveled a few inches. I wonder if they still make those…
It’s been understandably quiet around the blogosphere this week, which has been helpful as I am sure we were all otherwise occupied, but I’ve missed getting together with my blog friends. I imagine most people’s posting might be a little iffy this next week, too, but then we’ll get back to “normal.” I have a lot of plans for that first normal week!
Here are a few pictures from Jim’s camera during our anniversary trip. We don’t have many photos of just the two of us together, but he got some using Jeremy’s gorillapod and his time-delay setting on his camera.
In the hotel room:
In front of the hotel:
At a little tea shop where we stopped for lunch one day:
In front of the Heyward-Washington House waiting for the next tour:
I’ve mentioned a couple of times that we had “special plans” for this week that had nothing to do with Christmas. As some of you may have guessed (or knew from Facebook), those plans did have to do with our anniversary!
We went to Charleston, SC Monday and came back Wednesday afternoon. We’ve been to Charleston twice before: one weekend with a tour group in our early married life, and years later taking all the boys to Folly Beach for several days, staying in a hotel right on the beach. This time we stayed in the historic district downtown — in a historic hotel, the Mills House Hotel.
Hotel lobby:
I liked this idea of using a half wreath on either side of double doors so it looks like one big one.
This was the first time we stayed in a hotel that didn’t feel like a sterile hotel room. It was lovely.
I was wincing at how much it must cost, but Jim told me that because of the points he accrued through his traveling, we were only paying the parking fee. That was good news! Though we hate his traveling, it was good to get something back out of it, and it made me enjoy the setting that much more.
The only negative about it was that you couldn’t park your own car in the lot: they had valet parking at the hotel or you could park it in one of the downtown public areas. I didn’t like not having access to the car whenever we wanted, but with a little planning ahead we could call down to the desk and have the car brought around so it was waiting when we came down.
Also the fancier hotels seem not to offer complimentary breakfasts.
But there were scores of restaurants within walking distance. The first night we ate at Magnolia’s.
Excellent — the service, the food, the atmosphere, everything. And scores of people were walking around at night, so we felt safe exploring a little afterward. There were a couple of little restaurants close by the hotel where we had breakfast, then lunch at a little tea shop one day, and dinner Tuesday night at Hyman’s Seafood. Didn’t like that quite as well. The potato soup was the best I have ever had, and Jim said the same of his crab cakes. But everything else was just ok, and the atmosphere was really noisy. Plus the only bathrooms were up a flight of wooden stairs. But supposedly, according to a plaque at my table:
We’re not really museum people per se, but there was a display based on weddings, wedding clothes in particular, that was neat to see.
The Joseph Manigault House was interesting though the tour only took about fifteen minutes.
The Heyward-Washington House was built before the Revolutionary War by Thomas Heyward, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
The first two times we came to Charleston, we did the usual touristy things — the carriage tours (in a horse-drawn carriage while a guide tells about various historical tidbits), the harbor tour, seeing the Yorktown, etc. And I think those were great ways to “do” Charleston at first, and I loved them. But this time was a lot more free-form. The museum we could browse through at our own pace; the houses had tours every half hour, so we could go to them pretty much any time. Otherwise we just drove or walked around and stopped whenever we saw anything interesting we wanted to explore. We drove around the Battery, drove past Rainbow Row, visited a few gift shops, walked out on a pier into the harbor, where we saw a whole roofline of these guys:
Overall it was a fun, relaxing time. We certainly got our exercise: if we walked like that all the time, we’d be in good shape!
It’s good to get away sometimes and just be together. This was our best anniversary yet.
On all those memes asking if we might have a white Christmas, I mentioned it wasn’t likely here in SC. We had about five minutes of snow yesterday, but then rain for most of the day, turning to slush with ice pellets by evening. Even before the ice, the rain was kind of a miserable cold rain and the wind alternated between turning my umbrella inside out or pushing it on top of my head. By the way, I learned that when your umbrella does get inverted, it doesn’t help much to try to pull on it to get it back down, but aiming it in the direction the wind is coming from helps the wind push it back down.
I persevered because I really wanted to get done, partly because I wasn’t sure what the weather would be like today, partly because I try to avoid malls and W-Mart on pre-Christmas Saturdays, and partly because we have Special Plans (not involving Christmas) for next week — which I’ll wait to tell you about until afterward! 😀 I’ll explain why then.
You have only to stay over Christmas with a family who seriously try to ‘keep’ it (in its third, or commercial, aspect) in order to see that the thing is a nightmare. Long before December 25th everyone is worn out — physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable gifts for them. They are in no trim for merry-making; much less (if they should want to) to take part in a religious act. They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house.
I have certainly had Christmas seasons like that, where it felt more burdensome than joyful. I liked all the individual elements, but all together with the extra events on the calendar and all the regular everyday responsibilities just created too much pressure.
We’ve scaled back in the gift-giving department. We used to give to all the nieces and nephews until they got to the age where you never knew what they’d like and never heard back from them. It was fairly easy when they were little and were satisfied with any toy. Then they married and started having their own kids, and there just got to be too many people to keep up with. We used to give to my siblings (Jim is the youngest in his family and they stopped giving to each other long before) and their husbands, but eventually it became the same issue — too many people and no real knowledge of what anyone would like. Living 1,000 miles away, we’re not aware of the everyday things they could use or would like, and just trading gift cards seemed useless to me. Then sending packages costs extra time and money. We tried drawing names one year and it just didn’t go over well, though that works for many families. So eventually we just phased out everyone but our kids, parents, and a few close friends.
So that helps a lot. I love giving, but as Lewis pointed out, the gift-giving of olden days was much less than it is now, and it is not the main point.
Getting started early helps, too. I keep saying I am going to do my Christmas cards Thanksgiving weekend, but haven’t yet. I need to do better in this department.
Online shopping has helped a lot, as well. It’s much easier to search a store site for a size or color that I need rather than looking through every.pair.of.pants in a store to find the elusive sizes my menfolk need. But other things really need to be seen and handled in person before making a decision. Now that my guys are older and into geeky technology stuff, my husband buys most of that kind of thing because he know much more about what it is or where to find it than I do, and that helps a lot.
Also, some years we haven’t gone to every party and program available, either. I enjoyed all of them once we got there, but the preponderance of extra things to attend can create pressure in itself.
I’ve learned, too, that though I’ve sometimes felt too rushed or pressured for regular devotions, I must continue to take that time, no matter what else does or doesn’t get done. I can’t expect to have God’s peace or the right attitudes or perspective without it. I’ve mentioned before that I am reading the devotional book Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, which I hope to say more about next week, but I can see its use becoming a yearly tradition.
From an old Generous Wife newsletter I kept this quote:
In planning for your holidays, realize that your husband would love to have a peaceful, happy wife. Work to scale back and simplify your holiday plans (grab a pad and pencil, write down everything that you plan to do, circle and do the really important stuff, cut back on the rest or cross it off your list altogether). Being an unfrazzled wife is one of the kindest gifts you can give your husband for the holidays. You really don’t have to do it all.
Though it is from a wife’s perspective, it is true for everyone — it’s good to be an unfrazzled friend, church member, co-worker, sibling, etc.
So whatever we do or don’t do, however we scale down or not, each individual and family needs to find what works best for them to keep the right balance, perspective and joy of the season.
I also wanted to share with you this sweet video I saw on Chrysalis yesterday. It’s made by a family with seven children who are missionaries in Haiti, though I couldn’t tell from their site what kind of missionaries they are. Their children portray the Christmas story — with real donkey and lambs! — but the highlight is the little seven-year-old girl singing with a beautiful, clear voice. Her “Glory to God” has been echoing in my mind ever since I heard it. It’s a nicely done video and the kids are all precious.
Welcome to Microfiction Monday,
where a picture only paints 140 characters.
Susan at Stony River has begun a Microfiction Monday wherein participants write a story in 140 characters based on a particular image that Susan has chosen for the day. Design 215’s Character Counter helps keep track of the number of characters. It’s a fun exercise. I tend to be too wordy, and this helps me pare things down to the essentials while trying to keep it interesting and creative as well.
The picture for today and my take on it:
“I’m sorry I dropped you in the puddle, li’l kitty, but you’ll be all warm and dry and fluffy soon. I wonder if I should use a dryer sheet?”
You can visit Susan’s for other stories based on this photo. It’s neat to see the different things people come up with!
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“In other news….”
Thank you for your sympathies in my post about things breaking down. 😀 The first couple of things listed there had already been taken care of, but I just included them because they were fairly recent. My husband worked on the microwave and discovered a loose wire that he was able to fix — and he thoroughly cleaned it out while he was at it. He’s sweet as well as handy. 🙂 And he told me the wireless mouse had different channels. Who knew? Probably everyone but me, but changing the channels worked. Then the downstairs DVD somehow started magically working when I pushed the “Open” button on the remote, when it hadn’t been working before, and I got a new purse which had a little side pocket for my cell phone, a feature I’d been missing. We had thought the dead car dashboard might have been a blown fuse, but unfortunately it seems to be something more complicated. I have a “distance to empty” setting on a little display above the rear-view mirror that tells me how much gas I have left, so I am doing ok without that gauge — but not knowing how fast I am going makes me nervous. And poor Jane Eyre is still stuck in the upstairs DVD, which is probably sending the poor dear into a frenzy with her history.
And the sun came out over the weekend! And it didn’t snow as forecasted for Saturday, which I was very glad of since I had much to do that day!
And Jesse’s JV basketball team won again Friday night!
So things are looking up in my little world. I know ultimately happiness depends on the heart and not the circumstances, but I do enjoy good circumstances. 😀
Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places.
Now my microwave doesn’t work unless you bang on the side a couple of times,
The gauges and speedometer, etc., on my dashboard are not showing up (everything starts and shifts fine, I just can’t see how fast I am going, how much gas I have, or what gear I am in),
And the strap on my purse broke last night.
Not to mention Jane Eyre has been stuck in my upstairs DVD for weeks and I can’t get the the downstairs DVD open (though the kids can finagle it),
And my mouse keeps hanging up until I call Jeremy to see what’s wrong. He changed the battery, but something is still wrong. And for some reason he is not interested in standing near me while I am on the computer so his vibes can keep it working right.
I am not going to ask, “What else can break down?”
I forgot to mention earlier that traditionally my very kind husband takes over the task of getting all the meat off the turkey after the meal and then cleans the roasting pan for me. I am so grateful — by that point in the day I’m wearing out!
I also forgot to mention in my Fave Five’s that when Jim went to pick up his mom for Thanksgiving dinner, he had his little car with the sunroof open. I guess he had never had it open when she had been in that car before. When she noticed it, she looked up to see out of it better and said, “Hi, God!” Cracked us up.
Edited to add: Here’s my husband’s (much better) version of the story, sent to his family:
I picked mom up in my car which has a sunroof. Mom loves clouds and she always notices them and tries to figure out what they reminder her of. So on Thanksgiving when I picked her up, at first, she did not notice the open sunroof (remember she sees with only one eye). When we turned and the sun shined in her lap she looked up through the open sun roof and exclaimed “Hey!”. Her head dropped back down to look at the sunshine on her lap, like she was figuring it all out and she looked back up and said, “Hi God!”. Maybe you had to be there and to hear her squeaky voice say it,  but it was really cute. Perhaps as long as a Thanksgiving prayer needs to be.
I had a very refreshing lazy day Friday. It was nice after a busy previous couple of days. I stayed in my jammies til after lunch, mainly messing around on the computer.
I hadn’t planned to go out on Black Friday, but Michael’s had a good sale on some things I was interested in, so I ventured out in the late afternoon. It wasn’t bad at all. Not too crowded and everyone was fairly friendly. The cashier and the lady directly behind me and I hadn’t been out in the morning and had, in fact, slept in, so we were pretty fresh! I imagine all those who had been out at 4 or 5 a.m. were taking a nap — or wishing they could. Plus I had some gift cards saved from birthday and Mother’s Day, which took care of 4/5 of what I bought, most of which was 50-60% off. A good excursion!
When I got home I told Jim I had been planning on making turkey bone soup, unless he wanted to take me out. 🙂 Jeremy asked me if that was a threat. I told him, no, I only use tuna casserole for that. 😀 We ended up all going out to a Mexican food restaurant — LOVE their chicken chimichangas!
Overall I’d say I had a pretty good day!
So, it’s turkey bone soup tonight. It is my all time favorite after-Thanksgiving dish. Plus I want to get the turkey carcass out of the refrigerator.
I’m not sure what all else is on the agenda for today besides a little laundry. I probably should sit down and make a game plan so I don’t waste spend another day being lazy. Two lazy days in a row would probably be even more indulgent.
So, last Monday I declared Getting Things Done week. I debated with myself about whether to show what I got done (– would anyone really be interested? Would I just be booting my own horn?) But just the fact that I declared publicly that I was going to dig in and get things done last week provided a little bit of accountability, even though no one was going to come after me or check up on me to see the results. But I decided to go ahead and show the results:
1. Cleaned off this table.
Before:
After:
This is a little drop-leaf table that used to be our main dining table ages ago. Now it is in the “sunroom.” It’s meant to be a table where people can work on different projects that they might need to leave out to finish or dry or whatever, but it tends to end up a place to dump things.
2. Cleaned off computer desk.
Before:
3. Sorting through files.
No photo for this one, but I sorted through two filing cabinet drawers, tossing our several things and moving them all up into the craft room into my little pink two-drawer filing cabinet (which I discovered tends to pitch forward. Sigh. Maybe I can put a brick in the back of the bottom drawer or something.) I also cleaned our two drawers in an upstairs plastic rolly-bin thing.
4. Cleaned out part of this cabinet.
Before:
After:
Still have some work to do there, but I put major dent in it.
By the way…that poor little amaryllis that someone gave me years ago actually bloomed all by itself in the box without having been planted. Does anyone know if I can cut off the old bloom and plant it again, or is it done?
5. Straightened and organized these bookcases.
Before:
After:
I still have a little work to do there, as you can see by several little stacks.
That blue bin contained outdoor things — basketballs, bats, super-soakers, etc. I had the boys go through it and sort out what was usable and what they wanted to keep, then they put the bin out in the shed. Then they moved two shelves worth of craft books to the craft room, and then I sorted and arranged what was left. I have a box-ful to get rid of (including a 30 year old Roget’s Thesaurus that is way out of date. I usually just use the one online anyway). I have a few more from home-schooling days that I want to list for sale — they are music books that I regret we never got to but which the boys have outgrown now.
It felt good to get to these things that have been needing attention for so long, plus it helped to actually see and remind myself of what I have. I discovered I have duplicates of a couple of books (which I am thinking I’ll hold a give-away for here). An added bonus was unexpected discoveries, like the letter I mentioned from my mom, and this sign one of the boys made a few years ago when I was repairing a stuffed animal:
I don’t remember their having a stuffed bee, but I do remember sewing a leg on something. I got a kick out of the “B+” blood type.
So now I need to start on a new list for this week, but I am floundering this morning. I’ve been fighting off a headache that isn’t enough to incapacitate but is making me draggy and foggy. I’ve been taking acetaminophen, but the only thing that seems to help is putting pressure on my forehead or cheekbones. I don’t want to spend the day doing that, though, so I am going to see if I can keep this momentum going and maybe shake it off. I am only going to try working on these types of things today and tomorrow, though, with Thanksgiving coming. The rest of the week I’ll just play by ear.
I have several links throughout my blog to different parts of Creative Ladies Ministry. I just got an e-mail from the owner, Julia, that she will be down-sizing and removing a lot of content starting next month. I’d encourage you to look around and save anything you could use — she has a lot of great things there and I am sorry so much of it will have to go. Her permissions policies are spelled out there, but many of her things can be reprinted for church or ministry use (but not online use).
Our furnace is still out, but thankfully we’ve had great weather. A little chilly some mornings and evenings, but a sweater has been pretty much all that was needed. We’re scheduled to get it replaced Friday. Yay!
I don’t know if I have mentioned that Jesse made the JV basketball team again this year. I’m happy for him! I have to say I have mixed emotions about all the games, especially the away ones. The older I get, the more I want to just be home at night, especially dark, cold winter nights. But I did enjoy fellowshipping with other parents last year once I did get out of the house. I can tend to be too much of a hermit sometimes.
We really enjoyed some good family time and fellowship this weekend. Not that we don’t always enjoy family. But we all got together at assorted times both Saturday and Sunday, and nothing extraordinary happened, but I just enjoyed the food and fellowship.
One of the things we did was watch the movie “Up.” Very cute! And very sweet ending. It had some sad and wistful moments, though — more so than usual for a Pixar film. I have to say I don’t think the trailers or commercials did much for it: I had no idea what it was about and wasn’t really drawn in by them, but Pixar is pretty much always good, so we wanted to see it. We weren’t disappointed.
Today started out well — but by 8:3o I was getting very frustrated by assorted things, like the grocery store not having the grapes that I like or the Eggo chocolate chip waffles that I like (no store I’ve visited in the last week has had the latter!), hitting seemingly every.single.red.light just as it turned red and having to wait through the entire cycle, then waiting on people running their red lights before I could go, stopping at Jack In The Box for a Breakfast Jack and root beer (some of you may remember I love their root beer, though I don’t usually have it with breakfast…) only to have it not taste right, causing me to have to go in and then wait while they changed the machine, then spilling root beer onto the car floor and into my shoe when I turned the first corner, etc., etc. — this was all within the space of about 45 minutes. But as I sat at the next red light recounting my morning so far, I reminded myself that all of those were really petty things. So many people have so much more serious issues in their lives right now. I had to remind myself again of some of what I wrote in a post about little things. It’s funny how some lessons are learned immediately and others take continual reminding — but thank God for His patience in both teaching and review. At least it was a much shorter time from first frustration to reminder this time around.
And then just after writing that I got a note of encouragement from someone who found my blog through a search about city buses, then clicked on my testimony and read it. To my knowledge I have only one post that had anything to do with buses, and I am amazed it came up in a Google search. Thank you, Lord!
I have officially declared this the week of Getting Things Done. I tend to fritter away too much time here and there (mostly here on the computer…), or else things come up at such times that it is hard to get certain tasks done around and in-between them. But — this week there are no unusual outside demands on my time, and we got the basic housework pretty much done over the weekend. Toward the end of last week I had made two separate to-do lists: one involved errands outside the home, and I got most of that done. The other consisted of tasks in the home. There is more on there that can possibly be done in a week, but I’ll never get finished if I don’t get started. I do tend to flounder away in indecision about where to start — but I am going to just PICK ONE and get going! II Corinthians 8: 11 has been coming to mind: “Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will, so there may be a performance also out of that which ye have.” So I am going to go perform some doing. I’ll let you know how it goes!
One last thing: I mentioned on Friday a baby boy named Gaberiel (that is the actual spelling) in the hospital fighting for his life with an infection in his lungs called PCP (Pneumocystis pneumonia) after having had a heart transplant and a host of other problems in the past several months. Last I heard his x-ray was a little better than last week, but otherwise there has been no change. I appreciate those who are praying for him and will update you as I hear of anything.
Stray Thoughts 