The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The last few days have been so nice and relaxing. Yesterday, my mom's big box of gifts arrived, bringing new excitement for ds (more Playmobil, and Magnetix!) and me (docking station/radio for my iPod). Just clothes for dh, so not so exciting.

Yesterday, despite my sinus woes, I even cooked a delicious meal - Tex-Mex Soup (using leftover turkey) and cornbread (found a Trader Joe's mix in the pantry). Mmmmmm! Perfect for a winter day. Then we sat by the fire and played Life (Spongebob version). Good times.

I think I am pretty much maintaining my pre-holiday weight, although we haven't had our weigh-ins for two weeks. Hopefully I just have three pounds to lose!

Are you ready for Christmas?

Isn't it funny how, when you're a kid, Christmas takes forever to arrive, but when you're an adult, it just pops up so fast? Yikes. Lucky for me, I actually got most of my Christmas shopping done early this year. (While in FL for Thanksgiving, I bought gifts for all the FL relations and left them, gift bagged and tagged, at the correct houses.) I have to wrap all of ds's presents, and I still need to buy my dh's gift.

But every year, I have great intentions of spending hours just listening to Christmas music and doing crafts, and it seems like the last time that actually happened in any great quantity was in about 1999. Sigh. Hopefully this week, we can get the house neatened up, turn on the carols, and snuggle up with "Two from Galilee".

How about you?

Winter Reading Challenge

Here's what I'll be reading this winter:
To Say Nothing of the Dog (Connie Willis)
City of God (St. Augustine)
Because They Hate (Brigitte Gabriel)
Mysteries of the Middle Ages (Thomas Cahill)
Parenting a Child with Sensory Processing Disorder (Christopher R. Auer)
The Right Attitude to Rain (Alexander McCall Smith)

Of course, I'll probably add other books (we go to the library at least once a week), and these may not all be read, but that's my plan right now.

What are you reading this winter?

This year's holiday photo

This is a photo of our family on the shore of Lake Tahoe in late August. We were there with another family, and it was wonderful! Lake Tahoe is gorgeous. And we were there at just the right time of year; it was not crowded. One day, we went to a small beach called Baldwin Beach, and we had it pretty much to ourselves. Lovely.

Things Are Always Changing

There was a song on Sesame Street that went something like this: "Things are always changing, but don't be sad and blue! Change can make you happy 'cause it brings you something new." I remember this song running through my mind when we were preparing to move from Florida (where I had spent pretty much my whole life up until I was 36) to Arizona (where we had visited, but only knew two people). We looked at the move as a big adventure, and ended up loving Arizona and meeting some wonderful people.

That song has been running through my head again lately. This time the change is definitely NOT making me happy. My dearest friend in Arizona, Heather, is sick. Very sick. As in cancer. She's going through chemo, and her hair is pretty much gone.

I can't even say how much I love Heather. I couldn't ask for a better friend. I look up to her a lot, and I love her whole family to pieces. I know she's going to be fine, when all this chemo stuff is over, but still, it changes everything. She's the most healthy, active, and energetic person I know. She's the one who's always available to help everyone else - she offers advice on homeschooling, fashion, and nutrition; she babysits (even my son, who although I love him dearly, can really drive a person barking mad); she brings homecooked meals over (she even brought me a meal when I broke my pinkie toe).

Now she's the one in need, and there's precious little I can do for her. I have a bag of some of her favorite goodies ready to deliver, but since my son and I are sick, I don't want to deliver it and expose her to germs. I plan to get her some excellent lotions and soaps (chemo is hard on your skin, and winter in AZ is hard on your skin anyway). But those seem like such little things, a drop in the bucket.

To make it even worse, she's moving to Florida next month! Her dh has a new job in Orlando, and their families live in FL. Now, we visit our families there once a year or so, and we do plan to move back to FL eventually, but still... how can she move away? When I told my son they were moving, he wailed, "How can I live without Josh?" (Josh is Heather's son, and Noah's patient and longsuffering buddy.) I know how he feels. How can I live without Heather????

I know that God is faithful, and He'll continue to meet my needs even after Heather leaves. But I don't like it one bit!

You Can't Go Home Again

We traveled back to central Florida to visit our families for Thanksgiving. Although we still hope and plan to move back to the Orlando area someday, we have really come to prefer AZ for climate and geography. Florida has humidity, and huge mosquitoes! And it's depressingly flat.

It was our first time returning to our beloved home church in 16 months. So much has changed! Our son's friends all looked so grown-up, the teenagers are now beard-sporting young men, some people have gotten engaged or married, or had babies since we last visited. Many new faces surrounded us.

Some of the changes were especially hard to deal with. The chief musician was let go for financial reasons, just couple of months ago. We were shocked, since music is a high priority there. The budget struggles must be significant. The senior pastor left (we were aware) to plant a new church. He leaves a great hole. A friend shared her recent diagnosis with a serious illness, and told me how her daughter is struggling. And saddest of all, a woman from our church had committed suicide. It grieves me to know how much our church family has suffered.

God never changes, and He is faithful to His people. It is so hard to see that sometimes, when everything else keeps changing!