Two Weeks to Go

It’s a reflective evening for me tonight, as are most evenings this time of year. Chores are done; my agenda is ready for me to leap into tomorrow morning. There’s nothing left to get into tonight that won’t take more time than I want to give it, so here I am, contemplating the upcoming holiday.

I’ve had so many wonderful Christmases; my memories are full of the blessings that the Lord has bestowed upon me in Christmases’ Past.

One of my earliest Christmas memories was the Lite Brite I got one year. I ran through the sheets of colorful images within the week and created a few of my own on the blank pages that had been included.

Then came the Easy Bake Oven that my brother got for me. The mixes back then were horrible, but my family dutifully ate all that I baked. That one took about a week to use up.

Ah, and then there was my first bicycle, my first taste of flying.

After that came my first record player and all the 45 rpm records I got with it. I wore a lot of those things down!

Several years after that, there was my first car that the dealer forgot to gas up when he dropped it off late Christmas eve. Yep, got a quarter mile down the road and ran out of gas Christmas morning.

And then several Christmases later, my first-born son: my Christmas Eve baby.

The Christmas traditions always managed to find their way into our busy schedules; driving around town to look at Christmas decorations, sometimes caravanning with friends, and then everyone meeting up at the local Denny’s for hot cocoa and French fries and voting on which houses had the best lights.

I remember just how blessed I felt on the Christmas mornings I got to see my children’s happy faces as they ooh’d and ah’d over the gifts Santa had brought.

And then there were the Christmases I got to spend with one of my grandsons, watching him put all the ornaments in one limb of the tree, and him being so proud of the job he did.

The years went by, and relationships (and Christmases) came and went, but I always seemed to have family and friends to share it with. The gifts now are a blur, but the love I felt sustained me throughout every one of those years.

And between the best of the bests were the years of “firsts” with lost loved ones, of which there too many to write about this evening; that’s a nostalgic trip I don’t want to take right now.

So tonight, I’m blessed and thankful that this Christmas I have my Hubbin. We have numerous Amazon boxes and packages under our tree; I’m afraid gift wrapping has become a thing of the past in the last couple of years. I’ll probably end up wrapping Hubbin’s gift on Christmas Eve. Nothing like waiting until the last minute for me, right?

We may not get to have our family and friends here for the holidays this year, but I know that wherever they are, my prayers are being heard, and they are being blessed as well.

I wish all who happen to stop by here for a minute, a very Merry Christmas.

God Bless you.