Seasonal Christmas at Last!

Finally! It looks like we'll have a real winter Christmas. Notice I don't say 'White Christmas". Ha! That would be a cold day in well, here. But it's currently cold (for here), rainy and SEASONAL. Love it. Too many Christmases around here have been plagued with too much sunlight and warm 70s. Yuck. I really should get into Vampire stories with the way I am resistant to sunlight.

I remember in 1994, a month and a half after Chris and I were married, it rained rained rained all day Christmas. Now THAT was awesome. Probably the last time that it rained on Christmas. And even if it doesn't rain like predicted, the temps still won't leave the 50s. Yay!

Papa and Georgia's Impromptu Visit

And there are winter storms wreaking havoc from the West to the East coasts. Papa and Georgia (Chris's dad and step-mom) flew in last weekend for a funeral in Georgia's family, and due to the winter weather in the Pacific NW, they can't get out on an affordable flight back to Oregon until after Christmas. They originally planned to go back this morning, but since the only thing that was flying out of the Portland were geese, their flight was canceled. We get a treat to have them around even longer this time of year, even if it wasn't quite what they had planned.

Here they are with the kidlets yesterday (Sunday). They came to church with us and everything!











The Lonely Shepherd

Over a decade ago, Chris and I bought our Precious Moments Nativity - it was the three piece set with Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus. We really should have been adding to it all along (and yes, I'm aware of Joseph's cane. We glued it back together more than once and it still broke off. So we just ignore it). This year, we realized how lame we've been that it STILL didn't have any manger animals, shepherds or wisemen. Tonight we picked up this shepherd and three little lambs (photo above). We also don't want to replace Joseph, because the Joseph they have now first is part of a "set", and two, is slightly different. The Joseph that Precious Moments has now is dark-haired, which is fine by me, except for some reason it looks like Tom Jones. So I'll stick with the original Joseph, despite the broken cane.

Next will come the wisemen, more shepherds and animals, but those are part of a huge set that retails at $150. But since we know now that it is the goal for when we put out the Nativity next year, it shouldn't be too hard to obtain. I also hope that for my birthday in April, Chris gets me the Jim Shore Nativity. I fell in love with it a few years ago and I KNOW I have to add it to the Christmas collection. I've hinted like crazy, but I'm gonna start laying it on thick (and any of you are welcome to help with that):









And to end on a humorous note, my Spidey Skeleton never made it down this year after Halloween (Hey, the rest of the stuff did!). He was taken down in a timely manner last year, but the year before, he didn't make it down either. I had a blue Santa Hat I put on him in 2006. But THIS YEAR, we found that cat Christmas dress-up stuff (you know, that crazy cat people would buy and actually MAKE their cat wear) work well with Spidey's skull. So he is in the spirit of Christmas too! And we had to go to PetSmart for Zoey's bird food anyway and their pet-torturing Christmas clothes were 50% off.