Five things friday (holiday)

I did it! I actually found a minute to sit down and write one post this week. You're welcome.

1. It really hasn't been bad at all having a house full. It all started Monday when I mad a quick trip back to Buda to pick up my mom and bring her back to our house on Christmas Eve (Tuesday). The traffic was not bad at all - other than on the way there a semi had tipped over when it was making the turn from route 49 to the 80/90 toll road. The trip back almost always seems to be the fastest, and this year was no different. My mom and I don't stop, and it took 4 hours 5 minutes.
2. Christmas Eve night the three of us went to the church service at the church/school where our grand kids go to school. All three of them participated, and this was Anna's last year there. It is a little too archaic for us, but it's a beautiful old building and we appreciate what it has to offer the little ones as far as school.
3. On Christmas Day we went out to the Feipels for some of Carrie's scrumptious breakfast and to see what the kids got from "Santa." Then around noon Jane and I drove to a gas station in Gas City and picked up Isaac, Ricci & Wynn from Ricci's mom who met us there. We then all gathered at our house and had our family "Christmas" that night.
4. The 11 of us have mostly just been lounging around the house, eating, watching movies, and taking turns holding little Wynn (who has been so well-behaved at 2 1/2 months old). Thursday evening we did all take in the lights at the Parkview Field Christmas display. It was unseasonably warm all week, and there were several breaks between raindrops.
5. "Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise... The Word become flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not touching. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space/time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God . . . who for us and for our salvation," as the Nicene Creed puts it, "came down from heaven."" (from Frederick Buechner's 'Whistling in the Dark')

 And there you have it... It's Christmastime in America. As for our corner, things begin their return to "normal" tomorrow. It has been good, but too short as always...