Fa la la la la la la la la

Once again the Lord has showed me "the error of my ways". Today as I am doing my route, listening to the radio, I was thinking through my to-do list. Quite frankly I have had a bad attitude. And if I am being honest with myself, it has been going on for years at Christmas time. I have tried to keep it hidden from everyone. I knew that it was stemmed from repressed feeling from the past. I wanted to think of myself as a "scrooge" and heaven forbid that anyone else would think that of me. But as Christmas approaches I cringe, and then it becomes stress, then fear and anxiety, and then bitterness. I procrastinate everything that has to be done and it all compounds.Finally after years of being overwhelmed by it all, I broke. Cari and I talked and although it helped to release that secret, I didn't let it go. She would tease me a little, razzing me with Ba-humbugs, but she prayed for me.

Today as I was listening to the radio, they were talking about Christmas candy and cookies. What their favorites were and recipes for forgotten favorites. It made me think of my mom and how she has always made Christmas candy and now (tomorrow actually) we are going to our 2nd annual Candy Makin' day. Where she is trying to pass the tradition down to us girls.

A 14 year old girl calls into the radio show and says that she is enjoying the "cookie talk" because she has never had "Christmas cookies". This is the first year that she has gotten to celebrate because her step father wouldn't allow their family to celebrate. She was sooo excited. The DJ's were listing off all the things that she needed to do this Christmas. She needed to have eggnog, drive through a lights display, ham for Christmas dinner, candy and cookies, She needed to peek into a package under the tree because all little kids try it at least once. She would just giggle and say okay, okay, as the list went on.

It worked, as I found myself overwhelmed in empathy, I started to tear up. God used that story to make me realize I didn't hate Christmas, I was just letting the commercially driven, financially inadequate, greedy selfish thoughts crowd out the wonderful things of Christmas.

So I went to buy Christmas cards. I wasn't going to send them out. But I think I've changed my mind.

Warming my heart

As I sit here freezing, I am opening some pictures that was just sent to me a few minutes ago. These were taken this summer, by Greg, Travis's boss. We went to Branson for Trav's company picnic. It was boiling hot that day. Here's the proof. Poor Lilly was dripping sweat from every pore. We all were. But it just isn't as cute on the rest of us. She is miserable in this first picture, but she is doing fairly well when it was time to eat.

Look at this shot of the drool. I don't think she could get any hotter. I think I can hear panting.

I'm pretty sure that she is trying to tell me that she would prefer the island weather.

There's my happy girl. Did someone say brisket?