Wishing You A Merry Christmas

Kedley and I have been working hard today, cooking and cleaning to get ready for Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow with my family. My family traditionally gathers on the Eve instead of the day proper. It's become the pattern over the years because my sister and nephew have another side of the family that claims their time on Christmas day. I like it that way. It usually means my husband and I spend a very mellow day together, watching Muppet Christmas Carol, eating leftovers and putting together our annual Christmas puzzle. This year we might take a drive up to Mount Hood in search of some snow. We like snow.

Tomorrow there will be about eight of us gathering here in the afternoon. It should be pretty low-key. The family decided to forgo presents this year in favor of just a nice meal and some family game time. We're all old enough now to be happy having togetherness, rather than gifts, as the focus of the day. Even the "youngsters" in the family are past the stage of, "Please, please, please, can I have the cool new toy that everyone else is getting?!!!?" So, this year we'll just spend time together. It'll be nice.

However you spend your days, I hope that it will be a blessed time for you, that there will be people you love, good things to eat, a warm place to give you comfort, and the love of Christ to give you joy. Merry Christmas.

Update: Christmas day turned out a little differently than we planned, but was wonderful just the same. A friend's plans fell through, so we loaded her and her two boys into the four wheel drive and took them up to Mount Hood to play in the snow. We got the sleds out of the attic, made a thermos full of cocoa, filled a box with snacks, and gathered all the hats and gloves we could lay our hands on for a bit of fun. Actually, it was a lot of fun. We sledded, and had snowball fights, and made snow angels, and just generally wallowed in the lovely white stuff. We sang every Christmas song we could think of on the way to and from the mountain, and even threw in a few songs we made up ourselves. (Is it blasphemous that we made up a new song called "Go Tinkle on the Mountain," done to the familiar spiritual tune? Keep in mind that these boys are 10 and 8.) The day didn't go the way we planned, no Christmas puzzle this year, but sometimes spontaneity has more to offer than tradition. This year spontaneity won hands down.