Christmas warmth

♪♫ It's Christmas time in the country ♪ ♫

It is seven o'clock Christmas evening. What a nice day! I love being home for Christmas!
My 18 year old and 11 year old...the only ones home... slept downstairs last night. Both of them were excited for the morning. They looked all cozy underneath their blankets by the Christmas tree. One of those moments you wish could freeze for a while. Life is so much about change, and sometimes I just want to hit pause and stay for a while.
We celebrated Christmas with the boys and their sweeties last weekend, but saved most of our own gifts for today. It was fun. Tom got a new sleeping bag, which he has been in, off and on all day. He's funny. Mostly we just hung out, which was nice and relaxing.....well not so for Steve who plowed the driveway and yard a good part of the day. We have a lot of snow, and it has been snowing for the last couple of days. It is a really wet snow right now which makes it hard to move.
Hallie Ann and I went out to brush the snow off the trampoline mid afternoon and decided we should be building an igloo...well we recruited the guys and for the next couple of hours made a really nice igloo! By the time it was done, it was dark, but we had a light, so we were good to go.
We have made a lot of igloos over the years. Seems like if we have enough snow and we get a day that it packs well, that is what we end up doing. Last year I think we made more of a fort, dug out from a big pile of snow. I like the igloos better. We were all soaked by the time we came back inside....and now I am so tired. Our roast beef dinner was a little past medium rare, which is what I would have preferred, but everyone else probably liked it better that way.
I love quiet Christmas days
I love the feeling of family and unity and love.
I had a lot of this kind of days on Christmas growing up.
We didn't build igloos, but we were together as a family
it always felt so good.
My mom was better at keeping the traditions than I am,
but despite myself
there are traditions that happened just because.
Christmas gatherings change
but Christmas itself doesn't
It is different now that the big boys are grown
and have other places to go
but it is still GOOD
I have the reputation of being a bit of a scrooge,
because I really don't like the world's treatment of Christmas,
but I'll take a hundred more like today
God felt near.
God was near.
He always is, afterall.
Merry Christmas!
God with us!