🙂 in about three hours now, all the Collins clan will start arriving for the big Collins Christmas dinner.
There won’t be a Collins in the crowd though. Mr. Collins had nine children, four of them boys.
The oldest had no children, but adopted a boy who rejected the clan and disappeared from the scene, The next had a boy and a girl, but the boy had a girl and he has since died. The next had a boy, who is not to be found. The youngest had all girls.
😦 There are no Collins’ at the Collins Christmas dinner.
But it will be nice. It always is.
🙂 Elvera will be glad when it’s over. As I said before, she’s not a relaxed hostess.
She was in a panic this morning, thinking she was out of napkins. But we found some. But I will buy napkins when I go to get ice.
😦 My husband is sick over Thanksgiving, his birthday, and our older daughter’s long weekend home from college. Not to mention we’re having a church dinner on his birthday.
🙂 We got the house decorated for Christmas last night; the last couple of years I have sort of stayed in the background and only participated a little (esp. the first year, when we’d only been married a month), since I knew it has been a tradition for the girls to do it the last several years. (Their dad’s role is mostly to get things out of the garage and put the tree together, and then watch as it gets decorated.) This year I didn’t hold back, though I know the girls have some specific things they like to do and I respect that and leave them those portions.
🙂 I finished my Christmas shopping (online), taking advantage of some good deals yesterday.
🙂 Having the whole family together for a few days.
🙂 Fruitcake, chocolate-orange truffles, chocolate-covered cherries–seasonal treats my family doesn’t like and so I can have them all to myself.
😦 My family also doesn’t particularly like my family sugar cookie recipe, so there’s no point in making it.
🙂 Less than five months till spring!
🙂 Less than a month left of the days getting shorter!
🙂 God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world.
🙂 Christmas bazaar today. I will get my Christmas baking done in a few short minutes by stopping at the bake sales
🙂 Chas will get Elvera napkins. These things are very important to a hostess
🙂 Three trees up and decorated.
😦 Real tree will have to wait another week
🙂 Toddler room/nursery again tomorrow. 😦 No communion for us as they servers usually forget although it is hard to think about it when you’re holding a crying child or playing with a giggling one 🙂
🙂 Christmas shopping started – 1 present for the gift exchange game my family now plays – so many more to think about 😦
🙂 I decorated my small 3 foot tree with the pearl necklaces I got from my aunts. At first I thought it a little creepy, but now it’s just very pretty and a nice reminder of them. Pearls glow very nicely with warm white lights.
😦 Hubby is sick and needs antibiotics. Can’t get in to a doctor for a few days.
🙂 Purchased the pretty paper plates/napkins etc for our small group potluck. We will have a white and gold theme this year with touches of celadon green. I love decorating for other! I even found Christmas crackers with gold music printed on them!
😦 I should not be allowed in some stores at Christmas 🙂
😦 Loaded 25 Christmas CDs into the stereo on Wednesday. Didn’t work. Hmm. 🙂 Re-loaded them the right way, but still didn’t work. 🙂 Unplugged stereo for a few minutes and then it worked!
😦 Can’t quite get into the Christmas spirit just yet. Feeling sort of blah.
🙂 We got some much-needed rain Friday. But it’s supposed to be 80 degrees on Sunday. Go figure. Keeping the boots and sandals, the turtlenecks and T-shirts, all within easy reach for now.
🙂 My Jeep looks ‘clean.’ More or less. 🙂 At least it rained hard enough to wash off those dried-mud Annie-the-cat paw prints that trailed up and down and over the dark blue paint.
🙂 Snow is once again visible on the distant mountain tops towering northeast of our port town. It always makes me smile when I spot them heading north to work on the freeway every morning.
😦 Newish neighbors have a motorcycle the sends my dogs into a barking frenzy when it comes and goes up the driveway next to my backyard.
😦 I emailed the local “Christian” station last year and complained about all the seasonal secular songs, saying that if I wanted to hear them I would tune in the secular stations. The manager wrote back saying that they have been doing it for 25 years and consider it an outreach to the lost, blah, blah, yada, yada. I stopped listening to that station because it sounds more worldly than some of the secular stations, even when it’s not December!
😦 I dread the next 4 weeks as every retailer in the universe tells us “Nothing says Merry Christmas like…” and then expounds on whatever claptrap they have to sell. And worse are those that take a good piece of music and change the lyrics to fit their product.
😦 Otherwise Godly people going crazy on Black Friday. I cannot for the life of me understand why Christians enter into the worldliness of this holiday. Celebrate Jesus’ birth if you want to (even though there is no scriptural ground to do so), but keep the commercialism out of it.
😦 “Christian” parents who lie to their children about Santa Clause. And we wonder why children lie to us.
Sorry for raining on your parade today, but I’m feeling more curmudgeon every year when it comes to how the church seems to be allowing a little leaven to leaven the whole lump.
😦 I’ve confessed that my pets have always had Christmas stockings. Today while cleaning out some Christmas boxes I ran across the old stockings of all my long gone pets; three sweet kitties, my perfect Border Collie and my bad boy redneck kitty. 30 years of love. It made me sad.
Peter, since we aren’t commanded to commemorate the Incarnation (or given any example of the early church doing so) and aren’t forbidden in taking any part in cultural celebrations, then what is wrong with having a feast with family on Thanksgiving or putting up a tree and giving presents at Christmas?
I think that extravagance, going into debt to but unnecessary presents, and greed are all wrong–but those would be just as wrong if we were talking about celebrating a person’s birthday.
My family chose to have nothing to do with Santa Claus and the Easter bunny (my mom had felt her parents lied to her about Santa) and I’d make the same choice for my own kids if I’d had any who were young children (though I might tell the story of Santa Claus as a make-believe story). But those are separate issues from whether it’s OK to celebrate the holiday and show generosity to others on it. Again, I’m not talking about paying $2,000 for presents for each child or any of that sort of extravagance.
🙂 A week that started with something emotionally painful, along with lots of tears, ended up with feelings of gratitude, happiness, & contentment. Thank You, Jesus!
🙂 Forrest may be a handful-&-a-half, but he’s also sweet, & polite. It amazes me how naturally & honestly he says “please” & “thank you” (or “sank you”, as he says it), without prodding. I like the way he’ll say something like “Could you please …” That may be normal phrasing for adults, but this is a three-year-old saying it.
Husband and four children should be returning today!
Two boys just finished cutting up the sixteen year old’s deer and wrapping it and put it in the freezer. Now they are cleaning up their mess and we can eat dinner. Not venison today, though.
It’s Over!
Everybody has gone home. They took some of the stuff, but we have enough left over to last a week. All good southern cooked stuff.
We were disappointed in that we only had 13 today. We have had 35. Part of the problem is that some of the younger generation, that is Chuck’s generation, is getting old folks ailments. That, to me, seems ahead of time for that.
But we had a nice time.
Lots of cleaning up to do.
I’m going to watch a football game tonight.
We’re still in Romans on Sunday mornings at my church, but our Sunday evening talks this month leading up to Christmas will have a special focus on the incarnation.
What football game are you watching Chas? I think USC-UCLA play today. That’s huge out here where loyalties are divided among the 2 hometown teams. We have sports bars & pubs near the waterfront who have dueling contests and wagers going every year.
Donna, I am just finishing up reading Romans. I realized that I was reading it in my new Bible and it was not helping me remember verses I had memorized so found my small, travel Bible that is NASV. I am reading through the NT 3 times this year, but am ahead of schedule so decided that I would read Romans twice! 🙂
I love celebrating Christmas. It is a good excuse to gift children with many of the things we would buy for them anyway. It is a good time to teach them to give. It is a good time to teach proper etiquette with a fancier than normal table. It is a good time to talk about the reason for the season.
🙂 I have a working sink in my half-bath again. So thankful for a husband who can do the things that need to be done.
🙂 Lovely Thanksgiving dinner with 2/3 of the children and grandchildren. It was chaos, but wonderful chaos. We were quite thankful for the few inches of snow the children could go out and play in together. Our house seems very small with six active children.
😦 Those who want to rain on other’s parade. I am not speaking of the comments here, but of the one on my husband’s fb page telling us that HE spent the day not eating to identify with those who are hungry, because God didn’t bless them. This man does not believe in God, but is not an atheist, either. We’re prideful to say God blessed us and we are thanking Him, but this man is not proud to tell us about his wonderful sacrifice. I don’t care that he went hungry on Thanksgiving (each to his own), but to make the cheap shots (a constant thing) to try to guilt others is sad.
I posted this on the Football Thread. But here because some of you commented on football.
I haven’t seen the end of the Bama/Auburn game yet.
A&M now needs to beat Mizzou.
Peter – The commercialism surrounding holidays is disturbing. Sadly, it is a characteristic of the modern world to seek to make a profit out of any human interest. Even here, the holidays celebrated as part of the Islamic calendar, are as promoted by the industries (one sees company billboards promoting a draw for a Tobaski ram or an all-expense paid trip to Mecca) as any holiday in the West.
However, the holiday existed long before modern marketing. Holidays exist because humans have a need to celebrate – to have an excuse to relax for a day, get together and do all the thing humans like to do, to eat, drink, sing and laugh. God recognised that human need and gave Israel several such holidays in the law. It is recorded in the Gospel of John that Christ observed all those feasts, with the addition of the feast of the dedication (John 10:22), also know as Hanukah – a holiday that occurs close to Christmas each year.
In spite of the human greed which taints modern celebrations, there is much to be thankful for having Christmas. The radio announcer on the station I mentioned once tallied up all the performances of the Messiah in the city of Toronto. It was well over a hundred, in a city which is noted for its secularism and pluralism. Here, Christmas is a opening to communicate, as the Christian holidays are public holidays as well as the Islamic holidays. Christmas still has an enormous potential for good, even if many who promote it are shameless in their materialism. As Paul said in his letter to the Philippian church, “What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.”
Wandering Views 
🙂 I was invited to join two families for a Thanksgiving celebration. We had it today as Thursday is not a holiday here
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🙂 Jo has already had her Saturday.
🙂 in about three hours now, all the Collins clan will start arriving for the big Collins Christmas dinner.
There won’t be a Collins in the crowd though. Mr. Collins had nine children, four of them boys.
The oldest had no children, but adopted a boy who rejected the clan and disappeared from the scene, The next had a boy and a girl, but the boy had a girl and he has since died. The next had a boy, who is not to be found. The youngest had all girls.
😦 There are no Collins’ at the Collins Christmas dinner.
But it will be nice. It always is.
🙂 Elvera will be glad when it’s over. As I said before, she’s not a relaxed hostess.
She was in a panic this morning, thinking she was out of napkins. But we found some. But I will buy napkins when I go to get ice.
LikeLike
😦 My husband is sick over Thanksgiving, his birthday, and our older daughter’s long weekend home from college. Not to mention we’re having a church dinner on his birthday.
🙂 We got the house decorated for Christmas last night; the last couple of years I have sort of stayed in the background and only participated a little (esp. the first year, when we’d only been married a month), since I knew it has been a tradition for the girls to do it the last several years. (Their dad’s role is mostly to get things out of the garage and put the tree together, and then watch as it gets decorated.) This year I didn’t hold back, though I know the girls have some specific things they like to do and I respect that and leave them those portions.
🙂 I finished my Christmas shopping (online), taking advantage of some good deals yesterday.
🙂 Having the whole family together for a few days.
🙂 Fruitcake, chocolate-orange truffles, chocolate-covered cherries–seasonal treats my family doesn’t like and so I can have them all to myself.
😦 My family also doesn’t particularly like my family sugar cookie recipe, so there’s no point in making it.
🙂 Less than five months till spring!
🙂 Less than a month left of the days getting shorter!
🙂 God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world.
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Thanksgiving leftovers. 🙂
Leftovers all consumed 😦
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🙂 Christmas music
🙂 Christmas bazaar today. I will get my Christmas baking done in a few short minutes by stopping at the bake sales
🙂 Chas will get Elvera napkins. These things are very important to a hostess
🙂 Three trees up and decorated.
😦 Real tree will have to wait another week
🙂 Toddler room/nursery again tomorrow. 😦 No communion for us as they servers usually forget although it is hard to think about it when you’re holding a crying child or playing with a giggling one 🙂
🙂 Christmas shopping started – 1 present for the gift exchange game my family now plays – so many more to think about 😦
🙂 I decorated my small 3 foot tree with the pearl necklaces I got from my aunts. At first I thought it a little creepy, but now it’s just very pretty and a nice reminder of them. Pearls glow very nicely with warm white lights.
😦 Hubby is sick and needs antibiotics. Can’t get in to a doctor for a few days.
🙂 Purchased the pretty paper plates/napkins etc for our small group potluck. We will have a white and gold theme this year with touches of celadon green. I love decorating for other! I even found Christmas crackers with gold music printed on them!
😦 I should not be allowed in some stores at Christmas 🙂
😦 Loaded 25 Christmas CDs into the stereo on Wednesday. Didn’t work. Hmm. 🙂 Re-loaded them the right way, but still didn’t work. 🙂 Unplugged stereo for a few minutes and then it worked!
🙂 Christmas music!
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🙂 Constant heartbroken rants and laments on Facebook by a relative over a guy she never should have gotten involved with and keeps going back to.
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Oops Wrong face. That should have been a 😦
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🙂 You can never have too may napkins.
😦 Can’t quite get into the Christmas spirit just yet. Feeling sort of blah.
🙂 We got some much-needed rain Friday. But it’s supposed to be 80 degrees on Sunday. Go figure. Keeping the boots and sandals, the turtlenecks and T-shirts, all within easy reach for now.
🙂 My Jeep looks ‘clean.’ More or less. 🙂 At least it rained hard enough to wash off those dried-mud Annie-the-cat paw prints that trailed up and down and over the dark blue paint.
🙂 Snow is once again visible on the distant mountain tops towering northeast of our port town. It always makes me smile when I spot them heading north to work on the freeway every morning.
😦 Newish neighbors have a motorcycle the sends my dogs into a barking frenzy when it comes and goes up the driveway next to my backyard.
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😦 Looks like my faces above woke up on the wrong side of the bed
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(Continued from open thread)
😦 I emailed the local “Christian” station last year and complained about all the seasonal secular songs, saying that if I wanted to hear them I would tune in the secular stations. The manager wrote back saying that they have been doing it for 25 years and consider it an outreach to the lost, blah, blah, yada, yada. I stopped listening to that station because it sounds more worldly than some of the secular stations, even when it’s not December!
😦 I dread the next 4 weeks as every retailer in the universe tells us “Nothing says Merry Christmas like…” and then expounds on whatever claptrap they have to sell. And worse are those that take a good piece of music and change the lyrics to fit their product.
😦 Otherwise Godly people going crazy on Black Friday. I cannot for the life of me understand why Christians enter into the worldliness of this holiday. Celebrate Jesus’ birth if you want to (even though there is no scriptural ground to do so), but keep the commercialism out of it.
😦 “Christian” parents who lie to their children about Santa Clause. And we wonder why children lie to us.
Sorry for raining on your parade today, but I’m feeling more curmudgeon every year when it comes to how the church seems to be allowing a little leaven to leaven the whole lump.
LikeLike
😦 I’ve confessed that my pets have always had Christmas stockings. Today while cleaning out some Christmas boxes I ran across the old stockings of all my long gone pets; three sweet kitties, my perfect Border Collie and my bad boy redneck kitty. 30 years of love. It made me sad.
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😦 Yeah, that’s the thing about Christmas. It can often be bittersweet. 😦
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🙂 Christmas baking is done and I didn’t even turn on the oven!
🙂 I might do some baking with daughter when she’s home – she likes to bake 🙂
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Peter, since we aren’t commanded to commemorate the Incarnation (or given any example of the early church doing so) and aren’t forbidden in taking any part in cultural celebrations, then what is wrong with having a feast with family on Thanksgiving or putting up a tree and giving presents at Christmas?
I think that extravagance, going into debt to but unnecessary presents, and greed are all wrong–but those would be just as wrong if we were talking about celebrating a person’s birthday.
My family chose to have nothing to do with Santa Claus and the Easter bunny (my mom had felt her parents lied to her about Santa) and I’d make the same choice for my own kids if I’d had any who were young children (though I might tell the story of Santa Claus as a make-believe story). But those are separate issues from whether it’s OK to celebrate the holiday and show generosity to others on it. Again, I’m not talking about paying $2,000 for presents for each child or any of that sort of extravagance.
LikeLike
🙂 A week that started with something emotionally painful, along with lots of tears, ended up with feelings of gratitude, happiness, & contentment. Thank You, Jesus!
🙂 Forrest may be a handful-&-a-half, but he’s also sweet, & polite. It amazes me how naturally & honestly he says “please” & “thank you” (or “sank you”, as he says it), without prodding. I like the way he’ll say something like “Could you please …” That may be normal phrasing for adults, but this is a three-year-old saying it.
LikeLike
Husband and four children should be returning today!
Two boys just finished cutting up the sixteen year old’s deer and wrapping it and put it in the freezer. Now they are cleaning up their mess and we can eat dinner. Not venison today, though.
LikeLike
It’s Over!
Everybody has gone home. They took some of the stuff, but we have enough left over to last a week. All good southern cooked stuff.
We were disappointed in that we only had 13 today. We have had 35. Part of the problem is that some of the younger generation, that is Chuck’s generation, is getting old folks ailments. That, to me, seems ahead of time for that.
But we had a nice time.
Lots of cleaning up to do.
I’m going to watch a football game tonight.
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I think I posted this the other day, but I liked this guy’s take on claiming Christmas — and even Black Friday — for the cause of Christ.
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/when-black-friday-becomes-a-mission
We’re still in Romans on Sunday mornings at my church, but our Sunday evening talks this month leading up to Christmas will have a special focus on the incarnation.
What football game are you watching Chas? I think USC-UCLA play today. That’s huge out here where loyalties are divided among the 2 hometown teams. We have sports bars & pubs near the waterfront who have dueling contests and wagers going every year.
LikeLike
Donna, I am just finishing up reading Romans. I realized that I was reading it in my new Bible and it was not helping me remember verses I had memorized so found my small, travel Bible that is NASV. I am reading through the NT 3 times this year, but am ahead of schedule so decided that I would read Romans twice! 🙂
LikeLike
I love celebrating Christmas. It is a good excuse to gift children with many of the things we would buy for them anyway. It is a good time to teach them to give. It is a good time to teach proper etiquette with a fancier than normal table. It is a good time to talk about the reason for the season.
🙂 I have a working sink in my half-bath again. So thankful for a husband who can do the things that need to be done.
🙂 Lovely Thanksgiving dinner with 2/3 of the children and grandchildren. It was chaos, but wonderful chaos. We were quite thankful for the few inches of snow the children could go out and play in together. Our house seems very small with six active children.
😦 Those who want to rain on other’s parade. I am not speaking of the comments here, but of the one on my husband’s fb page telling us that HE spent the day not eating to identify with those who are hungry, because God didn’t bless them. This man does not believe in God, but is not an atheist, either. We’re prideful to say God blessed us and we are thanking Him, but this man is not proud to tell us about his wonderful sacrifice. I don’t care that he went hungry on Thanksgiving (each to his own), but to make the cheap shots (a constant thing) to try to guilt others is sad.
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😦 😦 😦 Iron bowl,
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🙂 michelle’s Bruins are ahead, 14-7, at halftime.
🙂 Stocked up on cat food tonight after a trip to the dog park.
😦 Wow, that sounded pretty pathetic. What an exciting life I lead, eh?? 🙄
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oh, yours is exciting, really. Hard to even mention the little I do here. But… time to count the offering.
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Wow, the snow changes direction depending on where you put your cursor! Cool 🙂
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I posted this on the Football Thread. But here because some of you commented on football.
I haven’t seen the end of the Bama/Auburn game yet.
A&M now needs to beat Mizzou.
For all you doubters who chose Clemson”
Yaaaah Yaaaah Yah Yah
Yaaaah Yaaaah Yah Yah
Phoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooy
😆
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Chas, you need to see the end of the Bama/Auburn game. Auburn has a team of nuns or wizards or something working for them in the back somewhere. 🙂 😦
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Weird, KBells. Weird. I commented on that in the football thread.
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Peter – The commercialism surrounding holidays is disturbing. Sadly, it is a characteristic of the modern world to seek to make a profit out of any human interest. Even here, the holidays celebrated as part of the Islamic calendar, are as promoted by the industries (one sees company billboards promoting a draw for a Tobaski ram or an all-expense paid trip to Mecca) as any holiday in the West.
However, the holiday existed long before modern marketing. Holidays exist because humans have a need to celebrate – to have an excuse to relax for a day, get together and do all the thing humans like to do, to eat, drink, sing and laugh. God recognised that human need and gave Israel several such holidays in the law. It is recorded in the Gospel of John that Christ observed all those feasts, with the addition of the feast of the dedication (John 10:22), also know as Hanukah – a holiday that occurs close to Christmas each year.
In spite of the human greed which taints modern celebrations, there is much to be thankful for having Christmas. The radio announcer on the station I mentioned once tallied up all the performances of the Messiah in the city of Toronto. It was well over a hundred, in a city which is noted for its secularism and pluralism. Here, Christmas is a opening to communicate, as the Christian holidays are public holidays as well as the Islamic holidays. Christmas still has an enormous potential for good, even if many who promote it are shameless in their materialism. As Paul said in his letter to the Philippian church, “What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.”
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well said, rejoicing with you
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