It's the end of December already???

Our December at home

Where did the month go? We arrived home on December 3rd and the month has been filled with activity. The new cat is fairly adjusted to us being here, and the old dog is acting up, somehow knowing that we will be leaving again.

The big news when we arrived home was that our daughter was now the proud owner of a brand new 50 inch flat screen television which she was lucky enough to win at her work Christmas party! We have very much enjoyed her new television in our livingroom, which is not really large enough to accommodate such a large TV!

When we walked into the house, the sight of Shari’s 3 foot white artificial Christmas tree was perfect, sitting on the white wicker coffee table in our sun room. There was no necessity to put up our larger green tree at all. We did put up some extra Christmas lights and decorations in the sun room windows and on our fireplace mantel, and I brought out some of my Santa and angel collections.

The grandchildren were delighted to have us home and we spent as much time with them as we could. One evening they came to visit and were complaining about being bored. It was a fairly nice evening, so we suggested they might want to go out and play in the snow. It was neat to watch them out there, in the front yard, where there was not even one track made in the snow, flopping around in the snow like seals on ice, with only the Christmas lights on the front of the house and the corner street light for them to see. Soon they were trudging around in the virtual dark in the back yard, doing heaven knows what. Grampa found out what it was they were doing the next morning – pushing back onto the sidewalk all the snow he had shoveled out, as well as the area he had shoveled out to make a place for the dog, so it didn’t mess throughout the whole yard.

We had a small birthday party with cake for Emily at our house the day of her birthday, as her official birthday party was to take place later at the Bowling Alley. That is a wonderful place to have a birthday party! So much for the children to do.

We made a quick trip to Brandon to check out how John’s brother is faring and found him in great spirits, despite the fact he is suffering severe shoulder pain which is now requiring serious medication. His doctor commented, when he went to emergency for pain relief, “And now it starts”. We are so thankful he has been relatively pain-free up until now. Rita was a good sport having company when her dentist had ordered her to not put her dentures back in her mouth for two weeks. Her daughter teased her mercilessly when she visited, saying “How is my little gummy bear today??” and “Say that again, Mom!!” We were thankful to learn that after two weeks without her teeth she did not require a biopsy on the lesion in her mouth, as it was her bottom plate which caused the problem. She lost some weight in those two weeks as well…

While we were there, they managed to get all of their family together for a dinner, which they had not been able to do for years. John was surprised when his niece came in with a birthday cake for Uncle John! Two over-nights in Langenburg were greatly appreciated by my Mom. She was very happy to have us attend with her the Christmas meal in the next-door South View complex. They have a volunteer who provides a home-cooked three course meal once a week for Seniors at South View and anyone else who wants to come, for $7.00. The Christmas meal was extra special for the Seniors and it seems that our presence there was all my Mom wanted for Christmas, so it was the least we could do.

We had planned to stay another night on the way back, but there was nasty weather predicted and we wanted to get home before it got to bad. As it was, we encountered blowing snow in places, and freezing rain just out of Prince Albert. It was a good decision not to stay.

Back home, we invited the neighbours over for Ted’s 70th birthday party on Saturday night. It was great to have a get-together while we were here. Then a few came over again for John’s 69th birthday on the 20th.

What a wonderful afternoon is provided for local children at Redeemer Lutheran Church as a Christian outreach. Our grandchildren have attended in previous years and when I saw the notice in the paper, I asked if they wanted to go again and they said yes. When we arrived at the church, we were advised that the plan was for the children to rehearse a re-enactment of the manger scene and the birth of Baby Jesus, and that when we picked the children up at 4 p.m., we were all invited to stay to see “the performance”. The children had great fun and the performance was wonderful. All the 4 year olds were in fluffy sheep outfits and baa-ed through the performance. It was so cute. Our 6 year old Emily was one of the angels. There were shepherds and wise men and a wicked ruler, along with Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus. Keely and Bryton were thrilled to be chosen to be the readers, and they did an excellent job. The “audience” got a lot of laughs out of the Pastor’s dynamic directing!

We had Christmas dinner at our house, with Darren and Jeanie and the kids, and Shari. $10 Christmas lottery packs were the gifts of choice among the adults but there were no big winnings. Darren and Shari each won $10. John got a Ken Davis comedy video. Darren presented us with a new cell phone.

Shades of Christmas past

SHADES OF CHRISTMAS PAST

As Christmas comes again, to me it always brings memories of Christmases past.

Being raised in a Christian family (for which I shall be eternally grateful), the Christ Child was always the centre of our Christmas. We attended a Lutheran Church and from the time we were old enough, each child participated in the Christmas Eve Service. Pastor A.O. Borchardt retired at that church after 50 years of service. His Christmas Eve children’s service was exactly the same for all the years that he was there, except there were different children. The younger children did group recitations of the old Christmas hymns and the older ones sang the carols. Everybody got a bag of candy with an orange on the way out. It was an exciting time for us children. My father had gone to this church all his life and had participated in exactly the same the Christmas Eve Service himself as a child - which probably contributed to his absence from the yearly service from about the time I was a youngster. He would be found resting on the chesterfield while his parents (who lived next door) and my mother and us four children would go off to the Christmas Eve Program. It was our custom to open most of our gifts on Christmas Eve, and lo and behold while Dad had been sleeping, all the gifts miraculously appeared under the tree. One special gift was saved for Christmas morning to open. I don’t know if that is a German custom or not, but it was a Christmas tradition at our house.

Recalling Christmas as a child brings the realization that times have so changed. We were delighted with the gifts we received, which in comparison to what today’s children expect, no offense, were mere trinkets. A doll, a sleigh, a G.I. Joe, a cassette tape, now would barely qualify for a decent birthday present… It makes it impossible for grandparents to compete in the Santa department. I know a lot of us don’t even bother any more. And I don’t even want to go to the place where written “thank you’s” were an expected courtesy.

Looking back over our own family Christmases, it is surprising which one I recall as a very SPECIAL Christmas. It was not the Christmas that we took our children age 11 and 8 to Disneyland. It was a very wonderful trip, but the four of us sitting in a motel room in Los Angeles was not the thrill we thought it would be for Christmas. We drug in a palm leaf off the street in absence of a Christmas tree. It was memorable in that it was the coldest Christmas there ever. ALL of the million, or so it seemed, poinsettias in the Disneyland complex froze! I was very thankful I had inadvertently brought along my “pink marshmallow” full length quilted winter coat. The locals were not prepared for such a deep freeze, and one homeless person died sleeping out on the street that week.

It also was not the Christmas, when we lived in Creston, that we took our young children to visit John’s brother and his wife in Kelowna. They have no children of their own. Guess what – somehow all of the gifts we had bought for the kids were left at home! We had to run about the day before Christmas buying a few new presents we thought they would like to have and not duplicate what they would get when we returned home!

Our best Christmas ever was the first year we moved into Creston from the lake house. As it was impossible to bury our water line on the rocky mountainside, when the freezing wind blew across the lake and up our side of the mountain, the pipes froze. The first year that happened, it was no big deal. We had a woodburning stove in the kitchen and it was kind of fun. We just “roughed it” for a week or so. There was snow to get in and melt for doing dishes, etc., and we got drinking water from the neighbour. It wasn’t so much fun the next year when the same thing happened. There was a little house in town that was for sale for a very reasonable price, just waiting for us to come along and need it. It had been my previous conviction that we would NEVER leave our mansion (so it was to me) on the lake with our crystal chandelier and million dollar view of Kootenay Lake. But then, I did not know “the bigger picture”. It was the first step to prying me off my mountainside and eventually moving to Prince Albert for reasons I can share in another story sometime.

But I digress. We moved into Creston and our first Christmas there, we were feeling quite lonely and disappointed that we could not afford to be home in Saskatchewan with our family that year. It had not snowed much at all in December, but while we four were walking to the church from our nearby little home, the sound of the church bells ringing was heavenly and the snowflakes were gently falling. I still get goosebumps just remembering the feeling. At church we were greeting Darren’s young friend’s parents who lived in Wynndel. They are from Germany and did not attend church regularly, but of course this was Christmas. Realizing they may just be going home after church to their empty house, as we were going to be doing, we invited them over for a visit. They accepted and we had a wonderful time of fellowship and getting to know some virtual strangers. Our children were absolutely thrilled with the few small gifts they received that year. That is the Christmas that I recall with special fondness!

As for my husband, he says BAH HUMBUG!

AND A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL.