Christmas Time is Here

This is our first Christmas ornament. We received it at a wedding shower fifty years ago.

It’s 7am here in northeast Washington state and it is still dark outside. We are still in Twilight and soon the day will dawn.

The angels, Santa, and Mrs. Claus ended up in our Christmas stash from Greg’s folks. The ones below are also from them.

These ornaments are from some recent travels.

These two add so much joy to our merry and bright Christmas days!

‘I Love Baba’

These are old, too, but not handed down. They were purchased from a thrift store.

All the ornaments and all the bits and bobs did not make it out this year and that is fine.

We completed our Christmas letter on Friday and made copies. For whatever reason this was a harder task this year. I’m writing this post on Saturday morning and hopefully I did get all the cards addressed and ready to go to the post office today.

UPDATE: Our cards were all addressed and stuffed and sealed on Saturday. On Sunday on the way home from our church service we stopped at the post office and sent all the cards down the slot! Hooray!

Hope all is merry and bright in your corner.

Tis the Season Hodgepodge

The tree is up and some of the ornaments are on it. I’m debating about how many to fill it with. Maybe it will be simplified this year. The rest of the Christmas bins are coming down today (Tuesday) and hopefully all the decorating will be accomplished before I visit Hodgepodgers this week!

Thank you to Joyce for the Wednesday Hodgepodge Questions! Click over to join in.

1. What’s the best $5 gift to give someone?

Oh boy, this is a tough one. How about meet someone for a cuppa that you pay for and give them an hour of your time. I would have said buy them a cup of whatever and a little sweet to go with it but it would have to be a cookie because pastries are up in the $6 range these days!!

2. What’s your favorite way to relax/unwind during the busy holiday season?

Sitting with my feet up and enjoying some quiet. Going for a drive and enjoying the winter views.

3. How do you feel about gingerbread? Love it or no thanks? Are gingerbread houses a part of your holiday tradition? If you said yes, how does that look? Do you like ginger flavor in other kinds of dishes?

A little gingerbread is enjoyable but it wouldn’t be missed. Houses have not been a big part of our tradition until lately with the Grands and it’s a nice craft for them to enjoy. Ginger is a nice addition to other kinds of dishes and in tea.

4. December 5th is National Blue Jeans Day…will you be celebrating? Do you have a favorite brand? A favorite pair? Do you have a hard time parting with a favorite pair of jeans? Blue jeans-joggers-leggings-yoga pants…which one do you wear most often?

Any jeans that fit well and stay put at the waist are fabulous in my book. When I find a brand that will do that I’ll cling to them forever! Around the house and working in the yard joggers are the comfort go to for bending, kneeling, pulling weeds, etc.

At night when the day and work is done it is always time for comfy pants! (Jammy bottoms)

5. As we head into this holiday season what’s your biggest priority or goal for the end of the year?

Remembering that God is my portion. With Him I have all I need. He is the strength of my heart.

“Christ’s divinity has no starting point in time. He always was. He was God before time began. He is God at this very moment. And He will continue to be God forever.” Alistair Begg ~Let Earth Receive Her King.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

More Snow and Christmas

Our round of snow early in the morning of the 22nd created an interesting layering. On our Global Blue Spruce it looks like someone placed kitchen towels out to dry. Or maybe white skirts with scalloped bottoms. Or a layer of Fondant Frosting. 🙂

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…

It is very safe to say we are going to have a White Christmas. Maybe we’ll have a snow shoveling day when the kids get here on Christmas.

We will pick up our roast for our Christmas dinner today and a few other things we need for our Christmas dinner and for our daughter’s birthday dinner on the 27th. Our Colville kids are feeding all of us on Boxing Day. We haven’t all been together since the wedding in North Carolina so we are excited for Christmas Day when all the vehicles pull into our drive.

Young At Heart Hodgepodge

Our last Wednesday Hodgepodge of the Year. Thank You Joyce From This Side of the Pond for keeping this going!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Hodgepodgers!!

1. How young is young? In the past, according to various organizations who decide these things, age 60 was the ‘border age’ to old. The World Health Organization has done new research recently and divided up the categories as-0-17 (underage), 18-65 (youth or young people), 66-79 (middle-aged), 80-99 (elderly senior), 100+ (long-lived elderly). Your thoughts on this particular breakdown, and also your thoughts as to where you land?

That youth or young people section is a huge stretch and laughable! In my opinion the WHO no longer lives up to it’s mission.

2. TIME magazine has declared Elon Musk person of the year in 2021. What say you? If you want to know more about how they choose you’ll find that info in the link here. If you were choosing, who would be your person of the year?

He’s a very rich and very smart man, I hear. On the standards of Time Magazine I suppose he deserves it. I don’t buy Time magazine.

If I was choosing person of the year I’d choose Dr. John MacArthur, a man of God who rightly divides the Word of God. He and his church stood up to local government overreach in trying to shut their church down and take away a parking lot lease in retribution. The church won their battle in court and the city had to pay their legal fees and their parking lease was reinstated.

3. I read here ten habits of extremely likable people which include-they greet the world with a smile on their face, they ask questions, they’re consistent, they put the phone away, they remember names and use them, they keep an open mind and don’t pass judgement, they’re authentic, they’re kind and generous, accountable for their mistakes, and they send thank you notes.

So, are you likable-lol? Which one of these habits could use some further developing in your own life? What is one habit/quality you’d add to the list?

I’d like to send more thank you notes and be more careful in passing judgement.

4. One non-holiday related task/job/goal/dream on your to-do list that you hope/plan to make happen before the new year rolls in?

Keep up my thirty minute a day cardio workout. I’m slipping during the holidays!!

5. Share with us some of your holiday plans.

Church this Sunday which will include the Children’s Christmas Choir which is always fun to watch. I’m hoping for at least one nose picker. LOL.

Christmas Eve Candlelight service.

Christmas day when all our kids will gather here and we open gifts and enjoy our traditional Christmas dinner. If we knew before we bought gifts how much the Christmas ~~Goose~~ Prime Rib Roast was going to cost this year we would have cut down on the gifts. Yikes! But for the record we’ll enjoy it all and say thank you Lord for all you give us to enjoy.

The two days after Christmas we’ll spend more time together as a family ending our time off with a birthday party for our daughter Katie who was born on the 27th. Our westside kids will travel back home on the 28th.

10 days till Christmas!

6. Insert your own random thought here.

Christmas in the country when you own 20 acres and find your Christmas tree on those acres. This is our son’s family and his land.

8 Months Old and Growing…

Time flies when you are growing! Jaymison is now 8 months old.

We all love to see his smile. What’s even more fun is to hear him laugh at his sister’s antics. Belly laughs!

This past weekend is was time for our kids to hunt down their Christmas Tree. Sledding and snow and cutting down a tree were all firsts for JJ.

The little family trudged out on their 20 acres to find the right tree for 2019.

Addy got right in there to help her daddy cut it down.

Back up the hill to the house for Addy’s new favorite drink…

Hot “toe toe”

He doesn’t seem too sure about this white stuff.

Sister will help him enjoy the snow! Next year he’ll want to pull the sled.

Do you have any snow in your neck of the woods? Looks like we are going to get some more snow on Thursday and then on Friday and the weekend temps are going up so we will have a lot of slush. Tomorrow will be a good day to stay in and finish up my wrapping.

Today we bought our Christmas Rib Roast on a good sale at $6.97 a pound! The butcher cut us a nice center section and trimmed it and cut the ribs away and then tied them all back on for good roasting. We’re set for the meat and we bought some other things for our traditional Christmas dinner. Lots of hams and turkeys were being purchased while we were at the store.

Charlie the Tree…

Here’s Charlie our Free Range Tree!

It wasn’t intentional but the lights on our tree form a cross intersecting with the lights on our window frame. From the manger to the cross will be celebrated with gratitude to our Savior, Jesus Christ at this old house!

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage on their site. All my photos that I stored and uploaded from that site are now big ugly black and grey boxes with a message to pay big bucks to get them restored to my blog. It will take me a long time to restore thousands of posts.

A Free Range Tree…

This year we are trying some new things to simplify Christmas. We cut down a huge tree in our side yard a couple years ago and don’t you know two trees have sprouted since then. This tree was the larger of the two. We have no desire for it to grow much larger so we decided we’d use it as our Christmas tree this year. Oh boy…it wasn’t easy to uproot it. Dear has some sore muscles from the job.

We are calling this our Free Range Tree. It is also organic. No pesticides, insecticides or chemical engineering of any kind were used on this tree.

We had to buy a larger pot to put it in after this smaller pot failed the stand up and stay up test.

It was quite a juggle job to get it in the house but we managed and it is sitting pretty in the living room in it’s natural state. Hopefully Dear will put the lights on it soon and I will decorate it and will show you the final result. So stay tuned to see our organic, free range, Charlie Brown tree! I like the words in this version of “O Christmas Tree”.

O Christmas Tree

O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Thy leaves are so unchanging;
O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Thy leaves are so unchanging;
Not only green when summer’s here,
But also when ’tis cold and drear.
O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Thy leaves are so unchanging!

O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Much pleasure thou can’st give me;
O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Much pleasure thou can’st give me;
How often has the Christmas tree
Afforded me the greatest glee!
O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Much pleasure thou can’st give me.

O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Thy candles shine so brightly!
O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Thy candles shine so brightly!
From base to summit, gay and bright,
There’s only splendor for the sight.
O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
Thy candles shine so brightly!

O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
How richly God has decked thee!
O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
How richly God has decked thee!
Thou bidst us true and faithful be,
And trust in God unchangingly.
O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!
How richly God has decked thee! !”

Three Full Days…

Before we are swept into 2015 I’ll share our full three days of celebrating…

We had a very quiet Christmas Eve. Early in the morning we braved the parking lots at Costco and Safeway and bought the last minute items we needed for Christmas day. We bought a Costco rotisserie chicken and macaroni & cheese for any hunger pangs we might have as we got ready for Christmas day.

Our Christmas Eve service followed the theme of peace in the midst of pain and chaos. We enjoyed singing traditional Christmas carols with a few modern twists and we even had snow fall during the service inside church! After work on Christmas Eve Andrew and Katie arrived for the night enjoying our treats from Costco and after Dear and I went to sleep I heard Josh and Laura arrive for the night after they celebrated with Laura’s family.

Early on Christmas morning Dear and I heard some ducks quacking and it took us a while to spot them on the neighbor’s roof. A quacky good morning made us smile.

More presents were added next to the tree as Dear and I slept.

We woke the kids up to a favorite Christmas CD by Twila Paris to see what gifts Santa delivered to our stockings.

Our breakfast table was all ready to go for our traditional Christmas morning breakfast of Swedish Pancakes that Dear makes for us.

After breakfast I changed out the table for our Christmas Dinner with two places added for Dan and his fiance Jamie who were on the road from Eastern Washington to join us for dinner and the rest of the weekend.

Our meal on Christmas day was our traditional Prime Rib Roast and Yorkshire pudding with roasted root vegetables and creamed corn.

Our kids with their loves!

The original family with our three children.

Our oldest, Josh, married Laura in 2001.

Our youngest, Katie, married Andrew in 2011.

Our middle son Dan who will be married to Jamie in 2015.

All of us together.

The day after Christmas we had another fun evening celebrating Dan and Jamie’s engagement and Katie’s birthday with family and friends. We had appetizers and Dear’s Tomato Rice Soup for our gathering.

Katie, Andrew, Steve (BIL), Lana (My sister), Beth (mother of Dan’s best friend growing up), Dan, Jamie

Laura, Dave (Father of Dan’s best friend growing up), Dear, Ellen b., Josh and Katie. Unfortunately Dan’s best friend growing up was home sick along with his little daughter so his family wasn’t able to join us.

We toasted Dan and Jamie and then we sang to Katie before she blew out the candles on her Applesauce Spice Birthday Cake.

Our hearts are full and flowing over.

Dan and Jamie left our home on Sunday morning headed across the mountains again to Eastern Washington. We got the text that they arrived safely and that is always a good text to receive.

How are things at your place?

Unveiling of the Mystery Tree

Some of you are new to my blog and aren’t familiar with a Christmas tradition we started several years back to take the stress out of finding the perfect Christmas tree. Our “Mystery” tree tradition goes like this…

We go to the nearest big box store and look for a tree in a certain height with a straight trunk and grab it with it’s string or netting in tack. This year the 6-7ft. trees in the Douglas Fir variety were about $25.00. We throw the tree in the back of the truck and head home wondering what it might look like once we cut away all the string.

This year it took most of the afternoon for the branches to relax as we had freezing temperatures here in the Seattle area and the tree was frozen. As it thawed we could see that it was another fine Mystery Tree choice. We’ve resigned ourselves to be happy with however it might look. Once the lights and decorations are added I’ll show more photos.

Slowly but surely it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at this old house.

I was so excited to see that WordPress is continuing their tradition of adding snow to my blog for the month of December!

Have you gotten your tree or started your decorating for Christmas?

I’ll be linking up to ABC Wednesday for the letter U soon. Thank you ABC Team and Denise Nesbitt!

She’s Trimmed Up…

Fewer than usual ornaments were unwrapped to put on her. The crocheted angel still has it’s place on top.

Speaking of angels I have been on a quest to find angels that are not the sweet faced variety. I found this next angel at clearance last year and I appreciate the fact that the face is blank. I wanted to find angels that would have to say “fear not” when you looked at them. I suppose the sudden appearance of angels could also warrant the need to say “fear not”.

Our one big event during this Christmas season was last Thursday and from here on out we’ll be enjoying the quiet, cozy, twinkling of the season.

We had all the leaves in the table for our dinner event last Thursday. I bought this Lenox Laurel red tablecloth at Goodwill this year. It was long enough for our table with all the leaves in. There were 12 around the table and I had enough Santa Hat chair covers for 12. Those I bought at Target Clearance a few years back now.

Our table is back down to just 2 extra leaves now and that will be big enough for our Christmas festivities from here on out. There will be six around the Christmas breakfast table and six at our Christmas dinner table. This week is a quiet week at home for us but a very busy week at work for Dear. Do you have lots of gatherings this year or are you enjoying a quiet cozy time?

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

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