Merry Christmas!

Here are some of my favorite pictures from Christmas Eve and Christmas. Our first Christmas in Vegas! Last year I would never have imagined that we would be able to do Christmas in Vegas and still be with family. We are so blessed that Aunt Melody and gang included us in the Christmas Eve and Mom and Dad were with us on Christmas! (The eve of Christmas Eve was pretty great too, but that will have to wait for another post.) And Ross has the week off so the merriment continues!

Merry Christmas

"Mary's Song" by Luci Shaw

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest...
you who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so light it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world. Charmed by doves' voices,
the whisper of straw, he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught
that I might be free, blind in my womb
to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

Baking Cookies

Yesterday Stephanie, Mom, and I got together to bake holiday cookies. The only thing I know how to bake is a sweet potato, so I was under heavy supervision the entire time. I would like to tell you about all the delicious treats we made but I don't speak cookie. There were coconut things, and chocolate things, and spicey things with raisins. And I witnessed pounds and pounds of butter go into these things. As Mom would say, what else do you need to know?

Christmas Present

My inability to delay gratification combined with Ross's inability to wrap or hide presents means that I almost always get my gifts early! This Christmas it is a keyboard and I'm soooo in love with it! Thank you, baby!

Our First Christmas Tree

I'm one of those sentimental people who is head-over-heels for Christmas. I sing carols to myself all year round and I cry every time I see It's a Wonderful Life. So naturally, one of the first things that occurred to me when we bought a house was "we're gonna have a full-sized Christmas tree this year!" For years I've been toting around my three footer - cramming it full of as many ornaments as its little branches could hold and perching it on book shelves to try to give it the majestic height a Christmas tree should have - but it always looked a little sad. It was, very clearly, a single person's Christmas tree. Well, my friends, those days are over! Ross and I have combined our Christmas powers and we now have a 7.5 foot tree and it looks exactly like a Christmas tree is supposed to look.

Getting to this point was a bit of an adventure. We compared prices at three stores, we nearly ripped the door hinges off of the Gallant trying to fit it in the backseat, and we had to rearrange the furniture layout in not one, but two rooms just to accommodate it's girth! After some tense negotiations over where the dining room table should go, some whispered prayers that the lights would actually reach the top of the tree, and some strategizing on how to keep the more delicate ornaments out of cat's reach, Ross lit the star on top and we stood basking in the glow of our first family Christmas tree.