Merry Christmas!

May all of you have a wonderful, holy, happy twelve days of Christmas (or what's left of it).

Our Christmas began with intense disappointment. We arrived at the airport on Christmas Eve, only to be told that they had already given our seats to standby passengers. We would have to come back on Christmas Day before seven a.m. to get on the standby list.

We attended Christmas Eve Mass with heavy hearts. I felt badly that this was supposed to be such a joyous occasion, but we were all so sad. We came home, ate Subway sandwiches and watched Wall*E, which we had received as a Christmas present in the mail that day. Since there was the potential of us spending the entire day at the airport waiting to get on a flight, I made muffins for us to eat for breakfast and corn dog muffins to each for lunch. Luckily all the ingredients were right on hand for me.

We arrived at the airport at six-thirty and checked in as standby passengers. I can't tell you how many prayers I said that we would get on the first flight of the day. Finally after everyone had boarded we were told that there were two seats on the plane. Happy Boy and I went ahead and boarded and my husband stayed behind with Reeda since her name was on his ticket as an infant. As were were about to get on the plane, Happy Boy noticed that my husband hadn't come, and said, "Papa! Where's Papa?" and started running back to get him. It hurt so much to tell him that Papa had to stay behind and wasn't going to be able to come with us. As we were finding our seats, I saw my husband come into the place after all, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

We ended up arriving at our destination about nineteen hours later than if we were able to get on our original flight. My mom had Christmas dinner all ready for us, and we opened stockings and presents on the second day of Christmas.

(Right now my husband and I are at a coffee shop while my mother watches the children. I am on our computer and my husband is using my mom's. A man looked over at us and at the man on a computer at the next table. He said to his wife, "What did people do before there were computers?" She replied, "I don't know. Watched TV, I guess." My husband said, "They did, indeed!")

Well, Okay Then

Me: Don't touch the Christmas tree.

Him: I wasn't. I was just touching the lights.

Change of Weather

After writing yesterday that the high was almost 80, I thought I would mention that this morning when I woke up it was only 27. The high is supposed to be 33. I am always amazed at how drastically the weather can change here. I have never seen anything like it anywhere else. A couple of years ago in January it was almost ninety, and two days later the temperature was in the twenties and we were having an ice storm.

Gaudete! An Advent Update

I can't believe that this is the third Sunday in Advent. Our Advent has been somewhat rocky this year. We have had two Jesse Tree ornaments broken (one of which was not fixable), two or three Advent calender pieces lost, the Advent calender taken down because it was being misused, one nativity piece lost, and so many nativity pieces used like baseball bats that it was finally taken away. Our tree has been up for ten days, but we still don't have any ornaments on it.

However, there have been many joys this Advent as well. Reeda now recognizes both the infant and adult images of Jesus which is a development I wasn't expecting for a while. Happy Boy is very excited any time we pass a nativity scene and points out each of the people or animals in it. Both of them sing the chorus to The Little Drummer Boy and Happy Boy knows most of the words.

Today we went to one of the two churches that I know if the diocese which has the communicants kneel. We have only been there two other times, but it is always a very reverent service. It is amazing how much a difference there is between a beautiful church and good hymns and what we normally experience during the nearby parish Masses.

When Mass was over we went to a nearby Christmas light event. Even though it was daylight, they were still having a lot of activities and things to see. The biggest draw for us though was free admission to the aquarium. The children had a blast looking at everything and fell asleep on the way home.

The temperature was pushing eighty so it was pretty warm walking around looking at everything, but that didn't seem to register for some people. I saw a couple families who were wearing hats, mittens and coats (and one of them was even down). I don't know what they were thinking dressed like that with such warm weather.