65 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-23-17”

  1. Good morning! We no longer count the days until Christmas because they melt into a long blur of activity at this point.

    We picked up son at the airport last night. That is a major accomplishment with it being so close to Christmas. What a maze of cars and people. Art always drives there. I am in charge of texting and finding the pickup location. I drove all the way to Texas and back and consider that easy compared to dealing with the Atlanta airport.

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  2. Janice, for years O’Hare and Atlanta traded places as “world’s busiest airport,” though recently I think Atlanta has kept it. Nevertheless, I felt extremely blessed once I was on the list for a friend to invite me for Christmas locally every year. I then had a place to go, and could travel through O’Hare in a different season (less snow, fewer people, slightly less chance of a long travel delay) to see family. After that I usually went in late winter, February or March, to see my sister (then in S.C.) or my mom in Phoenix, or my brother in Georgia. I was tired of winter by then, and I could get a week away. When I returned to gloom and often to old snow or fresh snow, I could endure it because I had had a break and because I knew it was nearing its end.

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  3. I am fortunate Janice in that all of my many experiences with the Atlanta airport are in and out without having to move. Except from one terminal to another. And they have trams and moving sidewalks. Leastwise they used to have them.
    Good morning everyone. SS teacher hasn’t called, so I presume he is teaching tomorrow.

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  4. Morning! No rushing to and fro at airports for us…thankful! DIA certainly looked to be a dreadful place to be on the news last night…I am sure the excitement of gathering with loved ones could make it bearable however 😊
    It’s a cooking, baking day for me today…and it will snow this evening! A certain man in this house told me he purchased a present for me yesterday…he proceeded to tell me I would hate it…oh boy…I can hardly wait…sometimes I just shake my head!

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  6. I would gladly rush to and fro to the airport and train station as we have in years past, because it always means the kids are coming in! Those days are gone I guess. But there are other family members to gather with and be thankful for. And the kids and grandkids will get a visit from us (or come here perhaps) in the Spring hopefully. The details of Holiday traditions tend to morph over the years, with joyful additions and tearful subtractions. But God is still Good, His Mercy is Everlasting, and His Truth endures down through the generations.

    Have joy in your preparations to celebrate the coming of Immanuel!

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  7. Took the Adorables to see The Star last night. I squirmed a bit with the storyline, but it was told from the point of view of the animals so it could slide. Kids laughed and laughed, and #3 sitting beside me whispered what was really happening, so they all know the nativity very well.

    She got very excited when she realized what the movie was about. “I’m going to be Joseph and my sister is Mary,” at the service Sunday at 5:30 if you happen to be in town.

    We’ve got three of them here for a sleepover so their parents could celebrate their anniversary. Some are stirring, so I’ll be starting the weekend cookathon very soon.

    Almost all the presents are wrapped, however, and that is a huge relief. The two blog posts have titles, which is a relief, and other than the stack of library books, there’s nothing else calling out my name.

    36 degrees here as the sun rises; Mr. Fit is wearing is balaclava these days when he jogs through the neighborhood. My late nighter has become an appreciator of the sunrise. He’s such a great guy!

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  8. Chas, Atlanta still has the moving “sidewalks”. It is always a rush from terminal to terminal. I don’t think I have ever arrived at Terminal A and left from it. I always seem to arrive at A and leave from E.
    I do love airports though. I just no longer like the flights. May as well be on a Greyhound bus.

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  10. Kim, this was probably before your time, but people used to dress up to travel b y air.
    You may notice that oddity when you see movies from long ago.
    Now they dress down. I never quite got used to that. But I don’t wear coat and tie.

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  11. Oh, Chas, now they can barely get out of their pajamas to travel. As I said, you may as well be on a bus, although I also notice that years ago people dressed better to ride buses than they do now to fly.

    I have mentioned many times about my icky, itchy skin. When I worked in a bank right out of college, women still had to wear dresses and stockings to work in this particular bank. The nylon made my legs itch even more. I kept benadryl cream in my desk drawer to rub through the stockings if it got too unbearable. It irks me to no end to go into this bank on occasion and see the women in JEANS!!!!! It I had to suffer, they should have to as well!!!!!
    Of course I made myself a promise when I left the bank that any job I took in the future would not require stockings and so far I have managed to keep that promise.

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  12. The Atlanta airport was fun. I went through it to and from meeting Chas and Elvera. I discovered that you could just walk from terminal to terminal and didn’t need to get on the tram. The walking tunnel was made to look like a forest with the ceiling covered with an abstract of leaves with lights above and beautiful bird songs playing. There was even a gap in the middle of the tunnel where you could see a flock of geese flying overhead. Delightful way to brighten up my travels.

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  14. I’ve never been to Atlanta Airport, was in O’Hare once or twice. Out here people avoid LAX if at all possible and go through Long Beach or Burbank or Orange County where it’s so much easier.

    My Christmas tree is so cute. After giving her the 2-cent tour around town and eating out, my friend stayed until nearly midnight, she brought about 500 photos from their recent New Zealand vacation. 🙂 Said it was about 1/5 of the photos they took and I’ll see all the rest in her scrapbooks when I come in the summer.

    At point last night, I noticed Annie lying on the front table — right next to the manger scene I’d put out, right behind the shepherds and their sheep. Very strange. Giant black-and-white cat joins the Nativity.

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  15. All the gifts but one are wrapped, and that one I am still making. I’m working on my mother-in-law’s cards, and for a while they weren’t coming together at all and I wasn’t sure they would work. The first one I made worked perfectly, but the others didn’t. Well, I’m into a rhythm and they are working well. I have six made (the pictures themselves–I still have to attach them to backgrounds and to cards), and I think I will go for eight.

    Two years ago I surprised her with cards made from photos I took in her garden. Most were flowers, but a few were animals–a goldfinch on her bird feeder, a squirrel in her tree, etc., a dozen cards in all, no duplicates. Last year we asked what she wanted and she said more cards, but they didn’t have to be flowers, so I made her a set of cards of birds. She tells me periodically that she sent one out, and that the recipient has it on their mantle or whatever.

    This year I decided to take photos of wildlflowers and a creature–which in two or three cases means combining two photos–and make parchment cards. So I have to trace the photos on parchment, emboss the lines, erase the pencil, color them with colored pencils, and then figure out what colored background works best and how best to attach each picture. (You can’t use glue with parchment, but you can sew it or use several other different methods.) So far I have a goldfinch on coneflowers, a bee on thimbleweed, a ladybug on some tiny white flowers that are considered “noxious weeds” by experts but that are beautifully symmmetrical with heart-shaped petals, a hummingbird hovering in front of some purple flowers I just identified (I put two pictures together for that one, since I liked the purple wildflowers better than the garden flowers where she really was), a monarch on milkweed, and a butterfly that didn’t turn out to look like its actual species but is still pretty on some other flower. Now I have to go do by a bee flying toward chicory and a dragonfly on a water lily. And then actually make the cards! Hopefully she will like them, but I’ve been wanting to make my own design for parachment cards for some time, and this seemed like a fun way to get started.

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  16. Daughter arrived yesterday for lunch, baked peppermint cookies in the afternoon, and pulled out a puzzle. We finished the puzzle this morning, started prep for Christmas Dinner tomorrow and played a couple of games of Settlers. (I won both) 🙂

    Son and DIL arrive late late tonight.

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  17. I think we are all pretty much ready for Christmas. A couple years ago, Nightingale revived the tradition of doing stockings, & she takes care of filling them. She enjoys doing that. What a sweet blessing. (Most of the stocking stuffers are practical things, with some fun things, too.)

    Tomorrow – Christmas Eve – our celebration will begin. As I mentioned on the prayer thread, Nightingale & The Boy are coming with me to the children’s program at church, during the morning service. We will be having our Christmas dinner tomorrow instead of Christmas Day. Sometime, probably in the afternoon, we will bake & decorate Christmas cookies, & there are two gingerbread houses to put together & decorate.

    Later, The Boy will change into his Christmas jammies, & we will watch a children’s Christmas show (the classic Charlie Brown Christmas this year), with hot cocoa & snacks.

    Christmas morning, we will open presents, & then have gingerbread pancakes, eggs, & sausage for breakfast. Sometime after that, probably after simply relaxing & enjoying each other’s company for a little while, Nightingale will drive Chickadee back to the McK’s, then go off to work, & The Boy will be going with his dad’s family for the rest of the day, & spending the night with his dad.

    I will enjoy the quiet time alone, but I will also be letting myself weep again, as I did on Thanksgiving.

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  18. Can’t get much better than a Charlie Brown Christmas with hot cocoa.

    I’ll be picking up Carol and her former roommate at the facility, Bethany, a very sweet African-American Christian woman who’s been good to Carol by loaning her money nearly every month (Carol pays her back; still, I’d like to see her quit borrowing money like that and I’m guessing Bethany would, too). We’ll go to the early (5 p.m.) family Christmas Eve service at Hollywood Presbyterian and then to the pancake house for ‘dinner.’ I’m treating, Bethany said she only had $10 left for the month and didn’t want to spend it on eating out so I volunteered to treat all of us. Carol, of course, has no money as usual and I’m afraid I’ve become so inwardly irritated over this longstanding issue that I was lapsing into sounding like a Scrooge. Sigh. Christmas probably isn’t the time of year to fight that particular battle. 🙂 Pray for me.

    It’ll be a bit of challenge with space in the Jeep as I’ll have to put one of the back seats up, eliminating some of the cargo space I usually need for Carol’s massive walker (Bethany’s is smaller). But we’ll figure it out, I’m sure.

    Christmas day I’m planning to get together with my cousin for a movie and lunch out, no pressure, just relaxing.

    I stopped in at Sherwin Williams today and picked up the paint chips for my 3 colors I’ve tentatively chosen for the outside of the house. It helps to have them physically in had and they do look different than they did online.

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  19. Kizzie, I watched Stranger Things season 2 this past week, very good. 🙂 And now I’m starting back on The Queen, I saw the first season and am looking forward to the new one now posted.

    Still no TV, I spent about an hour in a live chat with tech support trying to get a new universal remote to pair up and get it working, but no go. So for now, no TV, only the streaming apps.

    Goodbye Hallmark.

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  22. The only really busy airports I’ve flown into are the two in NYC and Dallas – Fort Worth. LaGuardia needs to close. It’s too closed in by the city. JFK seems out quite a ways. DFW is interesting from the air. I’m just glad my 2nd flight was in the same terminal.

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  23. DJ – I’ve been watching this season of The Crown, too, & enjoying it. I’m up to episode six, which includes her interest in, & meeting, Billy Graham. I haven’t seen it yet, but read that it seems to show that she has a genuine faith. I’ve read that elsewhere, too, unrelated to the show.

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  24. A positive development with Chickadee: She is studying to get her GED. YF & her sister (Chickadee’s best friend since young childhood) are helping her. I am very pleased.

    She had been doing that years ago, before she moved out, then let it drop. I am grateful that, although I’m not pleased with their other influence on her, YF & BF are encouraging her to do this.

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  25. I’ve been to both JFK & LaGuardia, but that was quite a while ago (and also to Dallas Fort-Worth, also a while back).

    I’m only on episode 2 of the Crown’s 2nd season.

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  28. DJ, the article ended with this: “About an hour after the display, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted a video of the light show with a tongue-in-cheek caption: ‘Nuclear alien UFO from North Korea.’” Really, the CEO is joking about North Korea a-bombs?!

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  30. We finished this same as on of the Crown this afternoon. No Philip isn’t likable this season. Jerk comes to mind.

    Mr Pnand I just got home from having freshly shucked oysters with L’s family. She is in the hospital but her family got together and we sent photos. She may get to one home tomorrow

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  31. It was seriously the weirdest sight. Had I been at work this week, I would have known what it was. But I didn’t have a clue. We were crawling in traffic, we (and everyone else, apparently) looking skyward and saying, “What the heck??” It truly was bizarre looking.

    Kim, yes, jerk.

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  32. Oh Donna I heard there was a strange light in the sky last night in Colorado Springs…of course I was in the house…in the forest…I missed it…never heard what it was.
    Dallas Ft Worth is crazy….I recall running from one gate, hopping on that dumb choo choo 🚂 getting off, running to the gate only to find out the flight had been cancelled due to lightening. I was running with one shoe on as one of my shoes kept falling off as I ran (they were flats!) Always be prepared with your sneakers when flying through DFW! 😜

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  35. It’s Christmas Eve where I am. I’m too tired to write all the things I did today and thinking about the rest of Christmas Eve makes me grumpy–so I’m headed to bed with many left undone.

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  38. My time at DFW changing planes was when I was on a night flight from NYC to Tucson. I had 90 minutes to go to the other gate. I went 3/4 of the way around the terminal instead of going the correct way. That was a long walk.

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  39. Good Christmas Eve morning! I hear birdsong…one of the nicest of musical sounds to my ears.

    I’ve been praying for the Holy Spirit to be actively drawing Karen O’s family into the fold of believers. Also praying for my friend Karen, here, from whom I did not hear yesterday.

    It will be a new kind of service this morning and evening. Things are so different now at church, and I don’t know what to expect except that God will be honored and worshipped.

    On the airports, son chose to fly out of Austin rather than deal with DOW. I have flown into the LAX airport one to get a connecting flight. I remember the busyness and the attire mostly. I’ve also been in the tiny airport at Bozeman, Montana. What a contrast. I have flown into Salt Lake City on the Bozeman trip and remember the lovely decent to that airport.

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  44. Kim, it made a tear come into this old man’s eye. I wouldn’t have admitted that in pst years.
    This is the one I have traditionally posted. It has been ten years now.
    And truthfully, I had clean forgotten because so many other things are happening. Not many good.
    As I said, Judy is a grown woman now. ,


    “Dear Friends,
    Here I sit. It’s early morning and all is quiet. The day has not unfolded and I relish the peace. Soon I will be surrounded by the world of 7th graders…the high-octane mixture of hormones, insecurities and the need to impress peers. Although the students are required to unplug earphones and park all electronics in their lockers, you can tell that the beat goes on in their heads and hearts throughout the day. More than ever, as I teach, it is necessary to repeatedly seize their attention away from the thoughts and visual images that seem to be playing in their minds, blocking them from new input. Bless their hearts. So many among our population have such challenged home lives. Many are without anchor to something good, true and hope-filled. Our prayers for our youth are so needed.”

    There’s more of course; I thought that would interest some of you. She also wrote a poem.

    Bethlehem – dark, cold and finally quiet,
    where most slept bubbled in their own existence
    unaware that in their town, that very night,
    Love had departed His heavenly throne to move in with humanity.
    In a stable was heard
    a baby’s gutsy wail
    the Word’s first sound.
    The town slept on
    But not the shepherds out in the fields.
    Blanketed under starlit night
    gentle stillness exploded into heart-stopping fear,
    brilliance swallowed the stars and
    the quiet was shattered by a thunderous announcement.
    Angels proclaimed that the world’s Savior had just been born in their town!
    No sleep for these shepherds.
    As they ran to search for this baby in a manger
    the Light led, unrestrained by the heavy dark of night,
    and just as the angels had said
    they found Him!
    A boy-King wrapped in rags, lay in a feeding trough.
    unimaginable Glory …
    wondrous mystery…
    In that stable they knelt … they worshipped
    the One
    the Only
    Son of God.
    But the town
    slept on.
    JL Stokes 2008
    Merry Christmas

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  45. I, at first, deleted the preamble, but it doesn’t seem complete without it. So here:

    It used to be that when we went to a gathering of some sort, on our return, I would tell Elvera, “You were the prettiest one there.” (I still tell her she’s the best looking one in Adult IV.)
    Once we went to an affair that involved her colleagues at Jefferson High School, in Alexandria, Va. where they worked. After the affair, I told her that she was the second best looking one there. She said, “Who was first?” I said, “Judy”. WELL! it wasn’t fair. Judy was 20 years younger than the others. And youth is beautiful.
    Well, it’s much later now, Elvera is older and Judy is a grown woman and a school teacher. Her mother, Elvera’s friend, has Alzheimer’s (has since died). Judy sent us a card and a nice note. The first paragraph of the note kinda grabbed me. Since some of you are teachers, I thought, with her permission, that I would share it with you.

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  46. Lots of rumblings in son’s room. I thought it was gift wrapping, but no! He is reorganizing his stuff.
    IMO, it is time to get wrapping!

    We have food to prepare while not going to the two Christmas Eve programs. I will enlist son’s help.

    Son seemed to really like my new pastor. We had a wonderful service. I am happy with it all.

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  47. We are collecting a white Christmas. My husband left church during the service, too many people coughing and he has been sick enough this fall and winter. So younger daughter brought me home (but stayed to chat longer than my husband planned to–he wanted to get ahead of the snow as much as possible, but she and I stayed an hour). Nearing our house (within the last couple of miles) was someone changing a tire at the edge of a fairly busy road in a snowstorm and a car with a caved-in front end who apparently slid and hit a pole or something. Just not the kind of weather to be out unless you can avoid it, and it would be the weekend we have four places to go in two days!

    We’ll have several inches when it’s over, possibly close to a foot, which is a lot for December here and most definitely a white Christmas and not just a dusting.

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  48. I guess the gals are ready now but I told them I’m not getting them until 3:30 (which is plenty of time for a 5 p.m. service). 🙂 Everyone’s eager.

    Church is a short hop, 2 blocks, from their residence but it’s also very well attended on Christmas Eve so people start arriving very early. I picked up several boxes of mini sweet rolls for the facility, they’re sealed and store/bakery-bought so it should be ok for them to accept them, I hope.

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  51. Well, Fourth nephew is down for the count. He began symptoms while his parents were taking a walk, so my parents and I cleaned him up. I also have it, but it really is just the 24 hour stomach virus and quite mild for an adult – just a stomach ache that gets worse if one eats. Second nephew is completely back to normal – when he learned I had it, he grinned mischievously, said something about joining in, and gave me a big hug. Due to a surprise visit by Second Sibling and family yesterday – before we could warn them of sickness in the house – and the fact that no one seemed ill before we left for church this morning, where we saw Youngest Sibling and family, all the family have been exposed… So, we may be all sick together or separately for the next few days.

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  52. We got snow here also. We were at D1’s. Church cancelled because the guy they hire to plow the parking lot was out of town. With 4″ of snow and a slight uphill to exit the lot it would have made too many cars needing helped out of the lot.

    Oh, well. It meant more time with the grandchildren.

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  54. Shortly before dinner, The Boy was allowed to open his Christmas Eve present at the dining room table. To my surprise, they also brought in the heavy box that is for me, which I thought I would be opening tomorrow morning. I was told I needed to open it right then.

    Nightingale & Chickadee had gone in together to buy me a set of Christmas dishes – dinner plates, dessert plates, bowls, & teacups & saucers. What a very lovely surprise!

    What made it especially surprising is that when I had mentioned wishing I had a set of Christmas dishes, a couple months ago, Nightingale had poo-pooed the idea, remarking that we had enough dish sets (a couple of ours, & one of my MIL’s.) But that gave her the idea, & she & Chickadee started looking for just the right set for me.

    I am so pleased & touched. God bless my sweet daughters. ❤ (And yes, we used them for our Christmas Eve dinner – after washing them first, of course.)

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  55. White Christmas here, but only an inch or so. Enough to look nice but not affect driving too much.

    I think the Christmas Eve services went well, despite a few glitches (feedback from the microphones being too close at one church, one speaker’s mike not working well at the other (he may not have had it positioned correctly, but I was busy speaking at another mike and wasn’t going to turn around to look – we were doing a reader’s theater version of Luke 2), and some confusion about whether the organist or the recording incorporated into the Powerpoint presentation was supposed to play for one hymn (my son, the organist this evening, later described it as being like when two people are trying to pass in a hallway and they keep trying to move out of the way but instead keep moving into each other’s way). I enjoyed singing all the Christmas hymns (well, there might be a few that we didn’t sing, even between three services in two churches), and I hope everyone else did also. It certainly felt good having so many voices joining in.

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  60. Merry Christmas Debra, Peter, et . al.
    We had a nice Christmas Eve candlelight service last night.
    Chuck played his guitar.
    All my grandkids swere there, except Mary’s. It was a nice service.

    Santa didn’t stop by here.

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  63. Merry Christmas !

    Our night went well, I was able to fit both walkers into the jeep cargo space (which was much reduced after having to lift up the back seats which usually are left flat). It was a sweet service, as usual, the pageant with the kids & adults, carols and snap light sticks at the end for Silent Night. It really is a beautiful old church, gorgeous carved wood, a balcony and old painted wood floors & old wooden pews. And with so many of their church members being part of the film and entertainment industry, the pageants go off beautifully, of course, though the kids are always charmingly unpredictable. Baby Jesus didn’t cry, though he was quite fussy in the pew behind us before he went “on.”

    The pancake house was close by on Sunset and not busy so we were seated quickly and we drove back along Hollywood Blvd. to see the lights. There are always throngs of people on Hollywood on Christmas Eve, not sure if this is a ‘tourist’ season or if there are just a lot of activities going on to draw a lot of people out.

    And I was able to sleep in a bit today, trying now to make plans for a movie with my cousin who’s also just trying to wake up.

    What’s the movie with Churchill in it? There are a lot of good-sounding films that open today but we figured those might be hard to get into, Christmas (along with New Year’s Eve & Day) is a big movie day out here.

    Hope you’re all enjoying your (more) traditional white Christmases with turkey or roast beef in the oven.

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