Christmas Came, Christmas Went

How can a true Blogger pass up the holiday season of Christmas and not post a few thoughts? Correct- I cannot. I have been thinking about consolidating my thoughts all week and yet there they all are, rumbling around, bouncing back and forth in my brain, unable and unwilling to settle down into a solid mass of intelligent thought.

They remind me a bit of that ball of yarn the cat bats around the house from time to time. It just unrolls faster and faster, gets caught back up into knots and itself all over, tangles around chair legs(or perhaps brain cells for the purpose of my illustration )and then ends up impossibly unable to go back into a ball without significant outside assistance.

So it is with me and my Christmas thoughts. They just kept coming faster and faster, winding themselves around each other and then ending up tangled and unintelligible.I needed outside assistance! Someone other than myself had to enter my brain and help me think straight.

His name would be Jesus. I went for help to the One Who is really much more intelligent and able to pull my thoughts together for some semblance of sensibility. I went to church. I read my Bible. I talked to a man I consider a good and Godly friend. I hugged a woman like myself who is experiencing loss and change and growing kids. I gave and received a Christmas card. I gave and received a Christmas gift, which coincidentally came from a friend who at first I thought was crazy, and now I think is as necessary to me as breathing is to my health. My thoughts became less frantic and more organized, and disheveled thoughts became organized memories to tuck away for warming myself by on cold winter days ahead.

My oldest son and family came from North Carolina, arriving with 3 children and slightly ahead of a record snowstorm about to hit the East Coast.Our plans were set perfectly , beginning with their arrival and then adding families and people for the next 2 days, culminating in a complete family gathering for a traditional Brasilian Feijoada on Sunday afternoon.


It is no easy task to gather 7 children and their families, plus the added bonus this year of my Brasilian nephew, wife and 2 daughters living here for the year, an hour away. There are activities to schedule around, last minute gifts to purchase, food to plan for, work schedules to rearrange, but we had accomplished the mountainous task and were ready to celebrate.

Then came the snow. When I say it began snowing, I am not speaking of a light dusting, a windy whipping of flakes around the skies. I am speaking of the kind of storm weathermen long for, the one that they say "Be ready to be snowed in for a day" and the kind where the airports begin closing prior to the flakes flying!



Rachel and Aric, planning to arrive from New Mexico on Saturday,spent hours trying to convince an airline to find them a way to fly through. Naturally, there were a few thousand other people doing the same antics over the Internet and phone, but we only cared about two people not joining the family Christmas. How could the Snow be coming down this fast and this furiously on the ONLY day our family was set to gather? We had not counted on the snowfall in all of our scheming.

Becca and Steve decided to believe it when the weather predictions said it would worsen throughout the day, so packed their packages, dog, babies and car and began the snow covered trail over the river(Schuylkill)and through the woods to grandmother's house! They came!


What fun the twins had in the snow together, the dads alternating between shoveling and pulling sleds, the moms running back and forth to take pictures, and Grammy heating up hot cocoa and getting warm places ready to hang mittens on!!



Sunday found us snowed in with piles of at least 10" of the white fluff, but a blue sky and determined hearts brought the rest of the family into the festivities. One by one they came, ending up with a house full of 12 adults , 13 children , 2 dogs a cat and a grandmother who was loving her family united again.

The New Mexico family remained stuck in an airport, but the feijoada was delicious, the beer, wine and soda stayed cold in snowbanks,and I got my annual grand baby couch picture.


Ahhhh, life is good.
Christmas was not at all how I planned it.
It was better.