A Teensy Weensy Bit Early...

Everyone a Very, Very Merry Christmas!! (I'm sure I'll post again before New Year's, but I doubt it before Christmas.) This is my favorite time of the year, hands down.I love the opportunity for giving, I wish I could love snow, but we never seem to get any, I love the old classic movies--my favorite is The Year Without a Santa Claus. I adore the tree, and the reindeer antlers and Santa hats that both my husband and my dogs good-naturedly wear for me.


Most of all, of course, I love our "Reason for the Season", as over used as that phrase may be. I think it's the most incredible thing that God squeezed all His might into the form a little baby boy--the start of the climax of the greatest story ever written. It blows my mind, when I look up at the stars(we live kind of out in the country, away from city lights that dim their wonder), and imagine that ONE star could be so big and so bright that people could follow it for miles and miles and miles to such a specific place, and arrive so perfectly on time. I love the song "Labor of Love" because it paints such a vivid picture in my mind.
 
 I've posted it at the bottom, in case you haven't heard it, but here's the lyrics, also:

It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David's town
And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother's hand to hold
It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David's town
In the middle of the night
So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move
It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love

When the song says that Mary had no mother's hand to hold, my first thought is that she was being held herself, in God's grace and love and mercy, and that, such a short time later, she had Jesus' little hand to hold, and how surely that made everything worth it.

Blows. My. Mind. So. That was my remember what Christmas is all about speech. :)

Also--little side-note: SUPER stoked about Steven's Christmas morning...

We we supposed to get just stocking stuffers--most of our stuffers don't fit in the stocking, but we're pretending all the same... I got him some of the usual stuff, ya know: a game, Scattergories(fab, if you haven't played it), a stubby wrench set, a little bit of whiskey(for him, not for me!), hand warmers(he works in the weather...if it's hot, it's really, really hot, and if it's cold it's freezing kind of thing...), new socks...that kind of thing...candy, of course...but, my pride and joy...

And, it's cheesy, I know.

See this? It's me not caring.. :P

I got one of those cheap, frosty kind of shower curtains...you know, the opaque kind? And I started at the very tippy top in permanent marker and wrote him a Christmas note.

It had some Merry Christmases. It had a couple quotes, some song lyrics that mean a lot to us( I won't give up, by Jazon Mraz and Fall Into Me by Sugarland), some slightly risque things, of course, and then a bunch of things that I really love and appreciate about him.

All the way down to the very, very bottom....

Here's hoping he likes it, and it's not too much cheese... :P

And, here is wishing you all again--a Super Duper Merry Christmas!!