Christmas Days 2017

 Tis the Saturday morning before Christmas. The house is clean, the gifts are wrapped, and our music those same familiar carols again.
Tomorrow morning we will sing Christmas songs with a full chapel of homecoming family groups. It will be lovely worship and fellowship.
We have already, two days before the Day, gathered up some memorable events that will always belong to this Christmas memory. Our grandbaby, Rian, is on his way home from a week long hospital stay. He had croup. That's really all it was. But we are all deeply grateful for the expertise of doctors and nurses with their tools and medicine. Every breathe being a gift is much more than a thoughtful saying... now. It is a truth newly appreciated by those of us who walked and thumped and rocked the baby to help him cough and keep breathing.
Home means more after the confines of a tiny hospital room even though we had a beautiful view of the harbor. It's just not the same thing as being home where strangers knock before entering nor do they suit up to come in. Home is so nice. Not sterile. Cozy. No tile. At home we have hygge.

 This Christmas I've been thinking more about Elv's parents and Christmas Past. Dad gave me this horse and sleigh thirty years ago. We used it every Christmas for a candy dish and decor and then it kind of fell out of favor because it became so grungy and unhappy looking, just grey-like. I kept it because Dad gave it to me, but felt ambivalent about it.
    This year, Mom lost her short term memory, so she is free to relive the old memories. It's been frustrating for us who live in the "now". We're learning to follow her back and visit about those old memories. We are hearing of things in her past we didn't know before.
   At any rate, I decided to restore the horse and sleigh. In vain, I tried to find a new horse. At last I decided that Dad must have actually bought a Barbie Doll horse. I don't even wonder what Mom would have said about that at the time. So before going further on that hunt, I filled the kitchen sink with warm water and a squirt of dish soap and gave the whole thing a bath.
    It's still a bit tattered, but some of the original white came back so I deemed it usable and precious after all.

 Brad offered to do the chalk boards.  I let him do whate'er he wished on this one and here you go. The other one had to have a line from one of my favorite carols. We all need that thrill of Hope.