73 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-21-15”

  1. Hello to all! It’s hard to believe that by this time next week that many children will have lost interest in the toys they received on Christmas Day. Isn’t it great that we never lose interest in the real reason for the season? He is not a toy to toss away and get a new one. Praise Him, Lord of lords and King of kings. He is for all eternity!

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  4. Good morning. lately I haven’t gotten involved in the conversations on this thread because by the time I get to it I am too far behind. I think I will try to keep up today. So, what are we talking about?

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  5. I am off to put up the last of Guy’s Christmas cards. I will have to hand address these. Hopefully I can get them in the afternoon mail. I am also headed to the beach. Someone wants to show the penthouse at Seawind and the owner requires that one of us be present. This is the same unit where I set the alarm off, so I will have to message her to turn it off while I am there. THAT was an experience!

    I have a small Christmas tree with multi colored lights that I did not put up. I am considering putting it up and letting the 3 and 6 year old decorate it Christmas day. I don’t have much to entertain little people at my house, although Santa has left them some toys.

    Oh and have I told you that when we go to Maryland next month Nana is going to come stay here with BG. She decided she was the most “moveable”. I thanked her very much. I am also going to tell her to feel free to move things around while she is here—they will probably look better wherever she puts them and if I don’t like it I can move them someplace else!!!!

    Off to the mines. Ya’ll behave, ya hear?

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  7. Musical Advent Calendar – Day 21: Mary’s song of praise, often called the Magnificat, has been given thousands of musical settings for two thousand years . This modern setting is by the English composer, John Rutter.

    “My soul does magnify the Lord,
    And my spirit has rejoiced in God my saviour.
    For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden:
    For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.”
    (Luke1:46-48)

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  8. About par for the course. As I turned in to Guy’s neighborhood I received a text that he was going to handle the envelopes himself (His wife is a preschool teacher…I KNOW who is handling the envelopes).

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  9. Part of yesterday’s gospel reading was the Magnificat. Just before that passage Elizabeth is overcome by the Holy Spirit and the babe in her womb leapt. Even before birth John the Baptist was proclaiming Jesus (I told you yesterday the priest rambled a bit–as grandpa’s who are going to meet their first grandchild are allowed to do) 😉

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  10. Hi, all. Thought I would come by and say hi on today’s thread now that it’s up. For some reason I am up a lot earlier than AJ! 😉 Tackling the books this week. All 9 boxes of them. Going to whittle them down somehow. I’m taking some to the bookstore where they have a used book section. Maybe I can get enough store credit to buy a new book! 😁 Others I will give to a small library. I have a set of basic commentaries that I will give to the man who is now pastoring the little church we planted in the city. Others I will keep for a while longer. 😉 I don’t want to get TOO carried away!

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  11. I noticed that the Youtube ad that comes up on before that film clip seems to be consistent. It appears to be a heartwarming Christmas message, until you notice that it is posted by Mormon dot org. I’ve noticed the Mormons step up their outreaches around Christmas, using the Christmas story – it reminds me of how Random called them a cuckoo religion, which lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. In view of that, I’m linking to a warning that Tim Challies put up last year: http://www.challies.com/articles/moroni-from-the-realms-of-glory

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  12. It’s 56 degrees in the house this morning, but the heater will take care of that shortly. I’m heading back to work today — I haven’t even so much as checked my work email in days. But I did get a text letting me know I’ll be helping cover something on the late side today so I don’t have to rush in (they’re honoring our celebrity ballerina, the one who made the cover of Time magazine recently and whom I interviewed back when she was all of 13 years old and still wearing overalls and sneakers).

    I’m sure it’ll be fun to cover (she’s leading a master’s class in the theater and the community is dedicating an intersection in her honor — where the local ballet studio is located). And hopefully it won’t all go too late (I think the class ends by 6:30 but then we’ll have to file a story on top of all the live tweeting, etc. — another reporter also will be with me).

    I changed out two more blinds panels last night (only one more, on the door, to go) and put up some more of the sheers, they look nice, it softens the room a lot.

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  13. Hi, Joanne! I know what you mean about whittling down books. I’ve just given into temptation and started accumulating more 😀 You can always donate to the local library 😉 I read a lot of new (to me) books there.

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  17. The book I’m working on has a couple of characters who are social workers. I’ve ask a friend who is a social worker to read it. I did take some liberties to make it fit the plot with the excuse that it is SciFI and things have changed a little in the future. I’m just wondering how she will respond and if I will have to start all over to avoid offending social workers. 🙂

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  22. Well, have a a hundred things to do before son gets home and now Art is needing my attention more than before. We are both so worn down. I had plans to get things in better order, but as usual, I have had to be involved in other projects. Too bad I did not go to the University of Georgia and develop the tenacity of a Georgia Bulldog to chomp and hang on until I get my way.

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  23. The weather is warmer, not so much like Christmas weather. It was good to be out early before the crowds got out. I think I have been putting ruts in the road between home and Kroger. I found a kitchen tool that you use with carrots and other veggies to make long strings so they can basically be used as healthy pasta. It’s a neat little five dollar gift if it works properly. Does anyone else buy Christmas gifts at the grocery store? Son usually buys a lot of food and drink items to fill a big basket for my brother. It will be especially appreciated this year with brother unemployed.

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  24. I am taking a break while I wait for Art to call me to shampoo his hair. I am going to make some turkey chili which son can also use for nachos if he chooses. I got spinach and mushrooms in case he wants omelets. He likes foods my husband does not care for so that makes for more interesting food choices. Son will cook omelet and share with me. 🙂
    Thankful that the Scouts got him cooking.

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  25. Roscuro, it has been both fascinating and scary to watch Mormons reinvent themselves as a “denomination” of Christianity with pretty much the same beliefs. I saw it first when Salt Lake City hosted the Olympics.

    In Bible college, I once sat in a class where the professor put in a video. I knew in a sentence or two that it was Mormons, and somehow assumed the rest of the class figured it out too. But when the guy on the video held up the Book of Mormon at the end, there was an audible gasp in the classroom as most of the class realized for the first time what we had been watching.

    But then, I grew up in the Southwest, where Mormonism has its stronghold, and we grew up with our parents telling us about it. I had Mormons as next-door neighbors for several years (maybe age 10-15) and spent quite a bit of time in their house. (It was nothing like a picture-perfect family, though.)

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  26. Many of you have an old yahoo email address for me. It is becoming over run by spam and advertisements. I just saw an email from Cheryl from the 16th. If you will email me at that old address I will switch you over to my new account.

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  30. 😳

    I thought that the Winter Solstice occurrs tomorrow.
    I just learned that it happens at 11:49 tonight!

    So, the sun starts coming back tomorrow. Sun will rise at 7:35 in Hendersonville tomorrow.
    I won’t see it. It will be raining.

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  31. Sun shining out here but they’re still predicting an onslaught of rain, mudslides and other mayhem with the El Nino, expected to begin sending storms to us in January …

    Oatmeal for breakfast, ‘healthy’ chili (leftovers still) and plain yogurt with frozen blueberries for lunch. Back to the healthier diet now that I’m going back to work (though I was pretty good during my week off, with the exception of fish and chips when my friend and I went out for dinner Saturday, followed by a few peppermint Oreos for dessert).

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  36. It is 49 degrees here. It’s not dog park cold, but it does feel colder because it is on the water. We have the kind of cold, when we get it, that settles in your bones and takes a while to warm up.

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  38. Raining all day, daughter arrived fine and now we can start celebrating Christmas. If I didn’t have one more chick commuting an hour each way on a day like this, life would be bliss.

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  40. There, I found my old login rather than using FB to login. Decided that it would be better to no have my interactions here searchable by my name. It’s an old picture though. Ill have to put up a new one.

    Spent a few minutes with a couple of the believers tonight using my Playschool nativity set to tell the story of Christmas. Nice to be back doing what I love!

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  41. Roscuro, I may donate some books to the local library, but all of our librarians are in the U.S. and the shelves there are pretty full too! I will probably give some to the library across the river.

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  42. In the last week, 113 people have read my post “A Death at Christmas.” It’s obviously struck some chords.

    Tomorrow is the anniversary of mom’s death. 20 years ago, I was in the midst of the horror flying home and on the 22cd I signed the papers to take her off life support–my father couldn’t do it.

    My aunt was with me when I gave permission for the organ donations and gasped. I looked at her and said, “Wait. Is this a problem for you? We don’t have to do it.”

    Her eyes filled with tears and her voice broke as we all thought of her baby sister, and she said, ‘No, no. That’s the right thing to do.”

    Seven people got organs that year for Christmas. It took just a tiny sliver out of the pain.

    20 years is a long time to not hear your mother’s voice. If you’ve got one, record her voice and keep it for memories sake.

    Though, I can still hear her saying my name! 🙂 In exasperation, in warning, and a host of other ways. It’s all good.

    And I’m much better about it all this Christmas, thanks be to God.

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  45. Mumsee’s surrounded by cuteness. 🙂

    Kim, yeah, I can imagine that bone-penetrating cold by the water. We don’t live near water, but the difference in the air when it’s damp out feels much worse. It’s foggy here today, and when I went outside before, wearing pants and a winter coat, it felt chillier at mid-30s temps than it did the other day when I was outside wearing shorts and a hoodie on a sunny day with temps somewhere between 10 and 15°.

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  48. More Christmas shopping to do. I thought I was done, but, after hubby’s shopping trip last night, in which he bought for the youngest four kids, he delegated to me today the job of buying for the oldest two kids.

    I have no idea what to get them. Neither does he. 1st Arrow’s interests are very narrow, and he’s got lots of things along the lines of those interests, such that I wouldn’t know what he doesn’t have in those categories.

    2nd Arrow doesn’t live with us, and I’m not real sure what she would need, either.

    They’re both twenty-somethings. How long do those of you with adult children continue buying for your offspring? Especially when they already have jobs and can purchase for themselves.

    Maybe I’m being a Scrooge, thinking, “Why do they need presents from us now?” I don’t remember getting any Christmas presents from my parents after I’d moved away from home. (I lived at home for all but my last year of college, though, and I’m guessing I probably did receive Christmas gifts from my parents the whole time I lived there, even after I’d finished high school and was a young adult.)

    My mom does continue to buy me birthday presents, though.

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  49. What about gift cards 6? If they are living on their own, a grocery store gift card might be truly appreciated….or one to a restaurant as they perhaps don’t get many chances to eat out?
    We have always given our kiddos presents…even after they moved out of the house….even on their birthdays….we all haven’t been together for Christmas in 20 years….doubt it will ever happen again…..

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  50. We don’t buy for them unless we plan to be together and even then it might not happen. I have seen too much competition ruin perfectly good relationships. My brothers and I stopped that years ago and get along great. Husband and his sibs sort of continue and there is a lot of complaining. We don’t have the money to compete with expensive gifts and lesser gifts are not appreciated. I do not wish that on my children. But they are free to give to each other if they like.

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  52. Neither of my parents died near the holidays, but my father died a couple of weeks before Father’s Day, and walking through the stores was painful even though Father’s Day wasn’t really a big deal. (We were kids without allowances or very much money, so we’d just get him a card.) My sister’s children lost their father suddenly in early June, too.

    A friend of mine lost her two-year-old very tragically–backing over her–a few days before Easter, and she found Easter extremely bittersweet. She had other children, including a younger daughter, and then she had another son. At my wedding, she sat at the reception with my sister (they’d been roommates for a year in college) and told her she couldn’t handle it when her younger children reached the same age at which she’d lost her baby girl, and she ended up deciding no more children. The grief was just too raw.

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  53. And last year marked 30 years since my father died–an unbelievable milestone. Since I was 16 going on 17, I’d been without him almost twice as long as I’d had him. And for many years the logically ridiculous question would go through my mind, “If he hadn’t died so young, how long would he have lived?” He would now be 98, and the possibility of him having lived so long is remote enough that I can’t be sad that he never met my husband or my children or any of that–he was a very remote part of my life, long past. But if I could take him on just one walk through the woods with my husband, I would. He would have liked doing that.

    With Mom it has been a dozen years, and that’s hard to fathom, too, since when she died I was already a full-fledged adult living in Nashville in my own house. But we buried her on what would have been their anniversary, and that seemed a fitting way to come full-circle with both of them being gone, burying her next to him on their anniversary.

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  54. They’re still my kids. I buy them presents. My son who commutes into the sun every day, I purchased an extension colored see-through sun visor and a pair of sock-slippers. The one who also drives long distances and craves information got a gift subscription to Audible books last year which he liked so much he renewed it himself.

    I give the girls jewelry, usually something nice and fun but not expensive. I’ll buy my one daughter-in-law a platter this year since she broke hers.

    And everyone gets books, of course.

    What do their siblings think? Maybe they have insight?

    I’d second gift cards and give some thought to what their life is like (see the sun visor). How about a funny pair of animal slippers for your daughter the vet tech? We send my one niece who has no real family, a box of Slovenian sausages each year which she claims to love.

    I’m a sucker for gadgets, so I’ve bought too many of those already this year!

    The best present, however, is one I’m doing right now. I’ve got tapes of me reading all seven books of The Chronicles of Narnia out loud to my daughter when she was young. I’m copying them onto the computer and burning CDs, which I’ll give to the Adorables. I may turn them into MP3s as well, and give to the children themselves. It’s adorable to hear my daughter reading the chapter titles and occasionally hear my husband asking questions in the background! Ha!

    And It’s time to turn the tape, right now!

    How about music you played yourself, 6?

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  56. I didn’t realize it was so important until Elvera mentioned it as an event when the SS director asked people to mention something special this Christmas season.
    Elvera said that she got a picture of her mother!

    I told you before that Elvera’s mother died on December 7, 1951. (Yes, same day.)
    Elvera never remembered what her mother looked like.
    Last Saturday her sister acquired a picture of her mother holding her older sister when she was a baby.

    It was dumb of me not to understand that.

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  58. Chas, I remember what my dad looked like (and I have photos) but not what his voice sounded like.

    A couple of years ago I went through the trunk of family photos from my mom’s house, scanning them and figuring out who everyone was. I was also in touch with my oldest brother and one cousin as we figured out my family tree.

    I discovered in shock that my siblings didn’t even know how many children there were in Dad’s family. (I did.) None of us knew the names of Dad’s parents. I found photos of grandparents on both sides of all the family, all four of whom had died long before I was born. (Only my oldest two brothers were able to meet any of them, Dad’s mother, and they don’t remember her.) I held in my hands photos of my grandparents, and learned their names, and I was in shock. In my experience, most people have met at least a couple of their grandparents. My daughters had all four of theirs until they were past twenty, and they still have three (though only one is really in good health).

    But here, two generations removed from me were total strangers whose names I didn’t know, and whose photo identity I had to verify. (I initially misidentified an aunt and uncle as grandparents because of their placement in a photo album Mom had put together.) Looking at their photos was amazing.

    I only told one of my siblings, my oldest brother, what I was doing. The first day of our family reunion, I handed out 100-page books of photos, with our family tree diligently traced and photos captioned. I photocopied and included two pages of a letter to my mother from her mother, congratulating her on her upcoming marriage to my father. (The letter was about a son-in-law my grandmother would never meet: Mom was in Nigeria, and her mother died a year later.) My siblings sat in awe, paging through the book, stunned at seeing photos of our mother as a child, photos of our grandparents, photos of the graves of my dad’s parents.

    My girls would take all those things for granted, because they’ve grown up in the same town as all their grandparents and aunts and uncles. But for me, and all of us, it was like finding buried treasure.

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  61. One of my wife’s uncles died in a farm accident on Dec 23 many years ago, leaving a wife and four teens. The youngest was there when it happened and watched his father die. The funeral was on Christmas day. A hard time that year.

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  65. Thanks for all the great ideas! Too bad I took off to go shopping right after I asked the question, without waiting for responses! I should have asked this morning. 🙂

    Now, if I’d had a smart phone, I could have checked the blog while I was tromping around Target, ha!

    Actually, as I drove, I thought of several things along the lines of what was mentioned here — gift cards, restaurant gift certificates, books — so can I say great minds think alike? 😉

    I went to Target, thinking of getting 1st and 2nd Arrows gift cards for that store, but thought I’d look around the store first, to see what I could find.

    For 1st Arrow, our recent IT grad, I got a nice wooden stand to set his computer monitor on. Plus it has a drawer in it. And it cost exactly the same as the amount I was going to put on his giftcard if I didn’t find any merchandise for him that jumped out at me.

    For 2nd Arrow I found a picture display with about a dozen clips to hold photos or what have you. I’ve seen similar items in decorating books — the clothespin-type displays seem to be gaining in popularity — and she likes taking pictures of her pets and siblings, so I think she’ll like that. I also got her some cedar items to hang in her closet, put in drawers, etc., to freshen things up and help deter moths from destroying clothes.

    And after those purchases, I still had $30 left, and managed to find four additional items, one for each of the youngest arrows.

    It was a fun trip. I guess I needed to go Christmas shopping to help stop the grumpies about having to do Christmas shopping. 🙂

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  66. What I didn’t get this year, and wanted to, was The Chronicles of Narnia set. I went to Barnes & Noble the other day I went Christmas shopping, and they had the series in two different forms — a single, huge paperback volume with all the books of the series in it, and a boxed set of each of the individual novels.

    The single volume was inexpensive, I think around $13 or something like that, but the pages were quite thin, and I figured with as many pages as it was, and how often I imagine we’d be reading it over the years, it would probably fall apart pretty easily. Plus, there was only one picture at the beginning of each chapter, so you’d miss most of the lovely illustrations I’ve seen in library books we’ve checked out.

    The boxed set was quite a bit more expensive — around $60 — but the salesperson who assisted me said the paper was much better quality, and all of the original illustrations are in those books.

    I would have bought the set right then and there if I’d had the money, but didn’t, and still don’t.

    Maybe next year. In the meanwhile, we can continue checking out library books to read the series.

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  70. 26 or so for dinner. Cookie decorating is still going strong four hours later. They’ve motivated to finish–Star Wars starts in two hours at the movie theater. 🙂

    My husband and I are not going to a movie at 10:30 at night!

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  71. A friend of mine had a stroke on Easter Sunday four years ago, and was unresponsive soon after. She was pronounced brain dead two days later. That she may have met her Lord in heaven on Easter has been a wonderful sentiment, too, that a mutual friend of ours expressed.

    And a couple of the hymns at her funeral service were Christmas hymns — Joy to the World being one of them, if memory serves. 🙂

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  72. Late night working, covering our star ballerina conducting a Master Class for aspiring young dancers. And it was raining when we left the theater. Nice, other than the muddy paw prints all over the kitchen floor when I got home. 🙂

    I decided to do some time travel tonight, I watched the Donna Reed Show and now am watching a 1951 episode of Our Miss Brooks. Both Christmas-themed shows. So vintage.

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