Silent night, holy night,
Wondrous star, lend thy light;
With the angels let us sing,
Alleluia to our King;
Christ the Savior is born,
Christ the Savior is born!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Merry Christmas
Tag: Holidays
A Single Apple
It was a crisp, sunny morning, a few days before Christmas. We took off with friends for a drive in the country, to a small town destination. Our first stop was a Mennonite bakery where we bought some tasty treats. Our next stop was a restored train depot. We ordered breakfast and sat down at a table near the gift shop area. This space was between the room with the order counter and a larger room with bigger tables. Soon after we sat down, women started filing into the larger room, heading to a Christmas party. We surmised this, because each one carried a wrapped gift.
I have always enjoyed wrapped gifts. Gift bags are great…they are practical, reusable, bio- friendly and beautiful, and I use them a lot, but a perfectly wrapped gift in splendid paper all tied up with a ribbon is special!
Wrapped gifts were mostly what we saw as women paraded into the big room.
Then one woman came through with a gift bag. Gary called out in jest, “oh, you shouldn’t have”…and she immediately pulled out a shiny, red apple from her bag and set it in front of him and said “Merry Christmas”.
It was delightful. We thanked her, and appreciated her spontaneity.
One single apple conveyed a lot of Christmas Spirit.
Week One in Virginia
We left Northfield a week before Thanksgiving to go visit our son and his family in Arlington, Virginia. On our way to the airport I realized I still had my slippers on! Fortunately, we were close enough to home so we had time to turn around and get my shoes! (I won’t mention the full cup of coffee I spilled all over my backpack at the airport.)
I guess I was excited. We were going to spend time with our son and his family. They are moving to India. We were happy to have some quality time to create more memories before they leave… and it was fun to take the grandchildren on adventures while mom and dad stayed home to work and pack! 😉
This blog post will be a diary: a photo essay, with one, or maybe two, pictures per day to capture our first week. It was challenging to select the photos out of the hundreds I took!
Our first full day we dropped Zoey off for Portuguese lessons and Gary and I went for a long walk with Ezra. This is the day we made chocolate chip cookies which I blogged about a couple weeks ago.
We also “packed” Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes online. This is an outreach project by Samaritan’s Purse that delivers gift-filled shoeboxes to children in need worldwide.
For breakfast on Sunday morning our granddaughter, who especially likes to cook and bake, made waffles. Her brother made blueberry syrup.
Ezra had a play date scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Zoey and I made a mosaic candle holder from a craft kit.
On Monday, we walked the kids to school. We did so each morning, and we also picked them every afternoon. It’s a .8 mile round-trip walk.
On our first Monday while Tim & Andrea worked/packed, Gary and I took the Metro to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Performing Arts. We walked down the Hall of Nations (flags from all countries) and the Hall of States (flags from all states). Minnesota’s new flag was on display. The Kennedy Center is a beautiful building, made of marble from Italy, with chandeliers from Sweden. We had a fantastic tour guide…all to ourselves.
Tuesday morning Gary and I went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is a somber, yet incredible, must-see museum.
Pictures of shoe piles and pictures of hair piles (from the victims) left a lasting impression. We also went through a special exhibit designed just for kids, which was very well done.
The kids Thanksgiving break started on Wednesday. We took the grandkids to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center which is a Smithsonian Museum near Dulles airport (not to be confused with its companion museum, The National Air and Space Museum).
The Udvar-Hazy Center displays hundreds of air and space craft, including the Space Shuttle Discovery, a Concorde, and a Blackbird SR-71 (fastest manned jet).
The space shuttle Discovery was a sight to see. There were so many interesting aircraft in this museum. It was impressive, and a lot of fun.
Of course the kids were off school on Friday too, so Gary and I and the kids hopped on the Metro …
and took it to the National Gallery of Art.
I really liked this place.
One really needs multiple visits to do justice to this art museum (I could say that of all of the museums), but this first time for me in the National Art Gallery was a lot of fun. We each chose an animal, color, and object to look for in the art works.
On Saturday, we walked through the Farmer’s Market near the apartment, took a short drive along the Potomac River, the kids showed off their skills on their hover boards, and we all went out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant.
*****
Night falls over Washington DC…
Views of the capitol, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and the Kennedy Performing Arts building (the large building with white lights on left side of photo) to name a few…
Happy Thanksgiving
It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praises to the Most High.
It is good to proclaim His unfailing love in the morning,
His faithfulness in the evening...
Psalm 92:1-2
The Circle of Life
I begin last Sunday afternoon, sitting outside on a hillside overlooking a lake, listening to music in the background, visiting with friends.
Monday morning I’m having coffee and catching up with a friend.
Tuesday evening we make a shuttle run to the airport to pick up friends and bring them back to their home in Northfield.
Wednesday was a beautiful evening for a pot-luck dinner and grilled hotdogs and a leisurely tritoon ride on Cannon Lake (toons and biminis…is this Dr. Suess influence?) and we celebrated a birthday.
Another birthday to celebrate on Thursday… flowers and a meal at Cosetta’s… with a lovely trio of multigenerational women.
Friday, being the Fourth of July, is yet one more birthday to celebrate – our country’s. We ate a piece of homemade pie and listened to a concert at a countryside gathering which claims to be the oldest 4th of July celebration in Minnesota. Later in the evening, we enjoyed a great fireworks show back in Northfield.
But also, death came this week, to a dear friend and we gathered together to remember.
All in a week’s time.
The circle of life.
Grateful.
Greeting Cards
Gary and I started a tradition of giving each other greeting cards when we were first married and continue to do so to this day, 47 years later. We exchange cards for Valentine’s Day, our birthdays, our anniversary, Easter and Christmas – that’s about 470 cards by now! And, as per usual, I kept them.
Now it was time to go through them…to enjoy re-reading them and then recycle them. We don’t want to store them in our new house.
We were home alone on Christmas Eve, so we thought that would be a good time to go through the cards and reminisce. It was a lot of fun looking at all of them… the different style of cards and reading our hand-written notes, if we added any.
Sometimes we gave each other the same card on the same year, and sometimes we gave the same card a year or two later. It was interesting and entertaining.
There are so many b e a u t i f u l cards. It’s hard to give them up, and I did keep a few. I think there are places that collect old cards to create new cards, and I thought about that, but it was overwhelming to think about in the midst of moving.
We also made cards for each other occasionally.
Going through the cards Gary and I gave to each other was a lot of fun, and then I was ready to recycle most of them.
But, it felt different going through all the cards I saved that our sons had made and given to us over the years. We encouraged their creativity and they made some imaginative cards over the years.
We had the good intention to look at them and then recycle them, but I couldn’t do it. We looked at them, and I put them in some semblance of order, and kept most of them… to look at again when we’re even older. And who knows – maybe someday their children will find the cards in a box and enjoy seeing how creative their daddies were.
HOPE
As the fog of the past few days slowly lifts, I think of it as a symbol of the old year fading away into a bright new year.
In looking back at 2024, I marvel at how fast it went. And so much happened. We had a fun, month-long road trip traveling many miles and visiting several friends in the southeastern part of the states. A precious, baby grand-daughter was born in the spring. We went camping with two of the grandkids, agonized over a family member’s health diagnosis, and had visitors from Norway in the summer.
And then…we started the process of building a house in the fall. It was very stressful and fun, exhausting and exciting, all at the same time, and it changed the tempo of our lives the second half of 2024.
Now that we’ve settled some (and really are happy in our new home) I hope we can start up some of our old routines, yet create new ones too. I hope to get back to walking daily, reading and writing, going out for coffee/lunch/dinner, traveling, feeding the animals at the farm, blogging more…things I enjoy doing, along with continuing to decorate and “de-box” (new word???) our new space.
The word hope has been so much of this past year’s prayers and dreams that I am bringing it along into the new year as my word for the year. I will continue to hope and pray for healing for others and for continued good health and new growth for myself.
My new year’s resolution is to try a new style of journaling. Tomorrow, January 1, 2025 I plan to print the word HOPE in large letters in my new journal, as we begin another year, in all its uncertainties and wonder.
Merry Christmas
That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! (Luke 2:8-12)
Happy Thanksgiving…
From our home to yours.
Happy Easter
