This Christmas

First, we lost a chicken. Poor chicken was taken from the coop and eaten by a possum before we had a chance to lock the coop up for the night. A friend gave us two new chickens, but I definitely got teary when Dave told me about the carnage. He buried her near the fire pit in the backyard....she liked it there. I asked him if it was 'friendly chicken' but he didn't know....they're pretty hard to tell apart.

 

Then, Dave got a stomach virus. He tried to be strong to keep up with our dinner-out-and-Christmas eve-church-tradition, but we turned around part of the way there and decided to spend Christmas eve in our pajamas, watching a Christmas movie on t.v. No frantic wrapping of presents, no fancy dinner. We had grilled cheese and fruit and tea with ginger snaps, and it was surprisingly nice.

 

Next, Lane opened gifts, lots of them, in a frantic 'she needs to go down for a nap soon, so lets do this because I need to start cooking and Daddy is still having stomach pains' sort of way. There was beeping and blinking and videotaping and tissue and boxes and batteries and plastic and stuffed animals and clothes and a rocking horse .... and her favorite was the tissue paper and the boxes...but she's seven months old so she met our expectations and then she napped...and then we exchanged gifts between eachother...simple gifts...and it was nice.

 

We started dinner - a turkey and stuffing and yams and green bean casserole and brussel sprouts and we got on the computer and the phone and talked to family, which made us feel closer - and also further away.

 

We set a trap for the Possum with cat food....and we ate dinner and watched 'a muppet christmas carol'....and Lane went to sleep...and we checked the trap for the possum, and it took the cat food and left the trap...so we laughed and we watched a Star Trek episode, and we went to sleep, and that was this Christmas...and it was nice.

 

We love and we are loved, we are grateful, we are blessed. Thank you to everyone who sent gifts and helped to make Lane's first Christmas all that it could be.