A Study in… Christmas Traditions

We’ve never done anything extra special for Christmas, just some quirky family traditions added in with the normal. I, like most American children, was always really into Christmas. I LOVED getting new toys to play with and always hated getting clothes. Our family tradition when I was younger was always to wait until 8:30 or 9:00 to get out of bed. We weren’t allowed to get out of bed before my dad, or we wouldn’t get any of our presents. So I would lay in bed staring at the ceiling until finally after an eternity he would knock on my door. Then came more torture, we would have to wait for my mom to make breakfast, and then eat it. After this we would all gather in the living room and stare at the presents, at least I did, while my dad read the Christmas story and tried to redirect my focus off the presents. Finally we would get to the presents. I normally got to go first, unless I was really rowdy, then I would have to wait till last. As I got a little older things changed, I wasn’t as excited about the presents and was more interested in the sleep. This was when my dad started waking us up at 3:00 in the morning to open our presents. I liked this about the first two years it happened. Then my brothers got married and had kids, so now we spend Christmas Eve with them eating, playing games, and exchanging gifts. Christmas day, normally in the morning we finish opening the gifts we got from our parents and they open their gifts. The rest of the day we spend watching Christmas movies, eating junk food, and just being lazy. One of my traditions has been to put up the Christmas lights on Thanksgiving day, but I flubbed that this year. I was too lazy, and then went to the Eagles game that night, but the past couple years some people in my family have wanted to skip the Christmas tree, that hasn’t happened yet, and hopefully it never will. I still do like Christmas a lot, and it is one of my favorite times of year. I love sitting in the living room looking at the tree all lit up and reading a book, or just drinking coffee. I even like Christmas music, mostly because it is only played for just over a month every year, so it always seems fresh and new.  So that’s what happens here on Christmas. Oh, and tonight at 6:45 EST we are starting the live streaming of our churches Christmas cantata, so tune in if you want to! There should be a red box on the main page of our website indicating that we are streaming.

(Edit)

Wisemen tradition… It really isn’t torture, it’s just something we started to make our manger scene more biblical. We take the wisemen and their camels and place them in the kitchen, on top of the microwave so that it looks like they are traveling to Israel, following the star. That’s all… Oh and the snow if to symbolize sand dunes…

So we went walking…

It was such a nice friday night, and the promised rain hadn’t arrived yet, so Rachel and I decided to go walking. Yes, walking as in putting one foot in front of the other, the type of thing that Americans don’t do very much of… I decided to bring my camera along to capture some of the more odd moments of our walk… But before we left I wanted to get a measuring wheel, the type that rolls along the ground measuring distances, because I wanted to figure out how many times you have to walk the paths where I work, to make a mile… So I stopped at my brothers shed, and spent ten minutes looking for said elusive wheel. Apparently Rachel was bored and took it upon herself to take pictures of odd objects…

Yeah, encase you are wondering, that is my rearview mirror in above picture… I don’t know, trust me, I don’t know… Anyway, even though my brother promised that said wheel was in his shed, alas it was not, so Rachel, myself, my car, and my camera were the only parties involved on said walking trip… Oh well, some other time. We then traveled the 1.7 miles to my place of work and began walking. We first stopped to take pictures of some yellow flowers, none of them turned out. I decided to take a picture of Rachel

Yeah, so it isn’t the best picture, but hey, I was just playing with my camera so whatever… All went fine on the trip, except for some odd fellow that was powerwalking laps around us, until Rachel got sick. Yeah, it was kinda odd, all of the sudden she said she didn’t feel good, so what did I do, yup I took a picture, and even got her to laugh, go figure…

But then, even after laughing and all, she made me go get my car and come pick her up so that she didn’t have to walk the rest of the way… Yup, she’s that mean

Even though she was sick, she still found energy to take a picture of me coming to pick her up, not sure why… but yup, that is the poor old “Rustang”

And there’s me, like a good little brother… Sorry if the pictures look really weird, the ISO sensitivity was all messed up, anyway, if you thought this post was really dumb, that’s ok, it’s a post right Ok, so maybe I could have done better, but I was getting desperate for something to post, so if you’ve already read this far, you just wasted a good minute or two which you will never get back…

General Update

Yup, life is pretty busy around here right now, and things aren’t looking up yet. Out of this whole next week, Thursday is the most open day I have. Since Christmas life has been a blur of nonstop work, church, chores, school, and hunting. Sleep has been little, and days have been long. Don’t get me wrong, although life has been busy, it hasn’t been without blessings. Yesterday my brother and his family returned from three years of missions work in South Africa. I has been fun getting to talk with them in person once again. This morning, the last day of extended doe season in the Lehigh Valley, I got a deer. A small deer, but a deer none the less. My car has been running well, my family has stayed pretty much healthy, despite all the sicknesses floating around, my lizards Gerard and Julian are both doing well and growing daily, so all in all I have alot to be thankful for. Life has certainly been good, busy, but good.