Merry Christmas to you and yours! In the presence of so much love, I share my visuals with you now, starting with the light that shines in the darkness.
We started the week at the home of my favorite artist-priest, who had his own visual of the God who was made man.
My favorite pregnant friend was there too, with her happy husband.
Christmas Eve found us exchanging gifts with part of our family, including my nephews and niece who are the cutest.
Callie got a pillow pet from Seth.
The pillow pet made stars appear on everyone’s faces.
Lydia got a dress from Callie, which she put on right away and declared herself “pretty” while running and running and running and running.
Me and my sweetie did what me and my sweetie do.
Then we went to the midnight Holy Communion service and came home and opened the traditional Christmas Eve pajama gifts from Grandma Jill.
They were matching this year, which made everyone appropriately silly. Or maybe the silliness was due to the fact that it was 2am.
Around 3am, the thunder started, which was right after we all had fallen asleep. We might have slept through it except that this guy doesn’t like thunder AT ALL and likes to let us all know about it. All night long. Until we banished him to the garage to conquer his fears on his own with all the power tools.
By morning, the storm was gloriously intense and we shared a very dark, very beautiful candlelight breakfast of stuffed french toast.
There were lit candles everywhere. Even on all the walls.
It was a beautiful breakfast on a beautiful feast day.
After presents were opened and everyone was dressed, we met up with our dear friends at a fun restaurant. My goddaughter has been very sick this last month and it was such a joy to spend time with her again after being in the ICU for far too long at Children’s Hospital.
But I think the highlight of the whole week was looking over the shoulder of this man in that restaurant and seeing white stuff coming down out the window in the background. And telling him about it. And watching him immediately leave the table and run outside to experience it and come back in with white in his hair and wet spots on his shirt and tears in his eyes. Yes, the snow on Christmas made him cry. Which made us all cry.
And then there was this for dessert. Need I say more?
It sure made that formerly very sick girl and currently very pregnant mama really happy.
Even the walk back to the car was beautiful.
And windy. Very, very windy.
When we got home, we played with our Christmas presents.
And with the fog on the windows.
Chris even got to play with his new firepit.
In the snow!
All in all, it was a lovely and peaceful Christmas. Our only sadness was that Chris’ parents got caught up in the travel nightmare happening all over the country due to the many snowstorms. They made it to San Francisco and then had to go back to Oregon. We really wanted them in Dallas and they really wanted to be here, but it just wasn’t meant to be, apparently. So now we have Callie’s graduation in May to look forward to seeing them. There should be no snowstorms then.
And now, a poem about snow, that sums me up pretty well:
SNOW
By Frederick Seidel
Snow is what it does.
It falls and it stays and it goes.
It melts and it is here somewhere.
We all will get there.
Fierce Peace 