12.25.12 Baby Jesus, Christmas, memories, cooking, and more selling!

Christmas Eve service at church tonight was exactly what it should be. A beautiful reverent reminder that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ. He came from Heaven to earth as a tiny infant – a human. How amazing is that! God chose to come to earth in the form of his son Jesus as a human. Bro. Randy spoke on Sunday and tonight about looking past the cradle to the cross. That is what the total message is about. Jesus came as an infant, grew up in the same world we live in, remained sinless, and gave his life on the cross to take on our sins and save those who choose to follow him for all eternity. I’m very simple in my beliefs and while it could be described much better by others what I described is the basic truth.

Southern Baptists aren’t very much into rituals but the Advent Wreath is one tradition I look forward to each year since it represents the story of Jesus’ birth. A candle in the Advent Wreath is lit every week leading up to Christmas. Each candle represents a part of the story so the children hear it a little at a time and learn from it. The final candle, the Jesus candle, was lit tonight with all the children surround our pastor as he spoke to them. These children will learn over time how blessed they are to have parents who love them enough to introduce them to Jesus Christ and bring them to church to increase their knowledge of him. Some of those children’s parents grew up in our church and I’m so happy to see that their children are now learning about the love of Jesus through their teachings and those of the church. Our children were brought up learning about God’s love and it was wonderful to see our granddaughter in the gathering of children around the advent wreath on Sunday morning when the second to last candle was lit in the group around the Advent Wreath. I pray that all parents will make their children’s faith the highest priority of teaching they can give them.

Today on Christmas Eve, 2012 the last of our house furniture was sold. The dining room table and chairs were sold yesterday and the matching buffet server went today. The table and chairs were the hardest pieces of furniture to let go of. We purchased it around 30 years ago when we lived in Metairie, Louisiana. Many, many memories were created around that table from dinner parties with friends, family dinners, regular family meals, children’s homework, dozens of puzzles and whatever else we used it for. It was a beautiful solid oak dining table and matching oak chairs with cloth-covered padded seats. After our sons wore out the original seat covers they were replaced and held up well. I hope their new owners will take good care of it and have many years of enjoyment as we did. Selling our house furniture hasn’t been too bad until this. The house is looking even emptier now.

We’ve still got a lot of computer stuff upstairs but that’s going to be addressed really soon – even if it kills us (meaning Roy!)  Today Roy, Chip, and I spent a lot of time cleaning up some tools and electronics to list on eBay. Roy’s stilts used for installing sheetrock on ceilings were bid on minutes after posting it. I love it when people buy the odd things you’re afraid no one will want! There is truly a buyer for everything. I spent time in the garage putting garage sale stickers on five boxes of household things. The garage is starting to look better and more manageable. I posted pictures and descriptions of several things on our local Facebook buy, sell trade page. I doubt too much will be sold since tomorrow is Christmas but we can always repost after Christmas. Hope people didn’t spend all their money on Christmas! We bought our RV for our 40th anniversary, Christmas, birthdays Easter, and every holiday from now until forever!

We won’t have any presents to open tomorrow (Christmas morning) since we did that on Sunday morning before church when our granddaughter Madisyn was here. No furniture in the living room except for the small tree and a few presents but that was all we needed. Our oldest son and his family won’t be with us this year so Paw Paw, Grannie, Chip, and Madisyn had a lot of fun on our own. After church we watched our Saints win another heartache-giving game! Geaux Saints!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Louisianians say “Geaux” instead of “Go” so when you see Geaux you know it’s one of us! Once we said goodbye to Madisyn we all crashed and started recovering from several days with our active 3-year-old granddaughter! Now that she’s gone and we’ve experienced having her with us in the RV we know better what we’ll need to take with us for when she comes to visit. I can envision a new Princess/Dora container designated for her in the RV basement.

Cooking for Christmas so far has been interesting. The sticks house kitchen is pretty bare but does still have cooking appliances. After making a couple of trips to the RV to get things Chip and I needed we decided to make do with whatever was in the house. We had a spoon, a fork, and one 16 oz. plastic cup. We used one of the cups to mix ingredients in, melted butter in the wrapping, and several other makeshift things so that we didn’t have to keep running back to the RV for the real tools! I’ve sold the turkey cooking pan with a lid so we’ll be cooking the turkey tomorrow in a short gumbo pot. I’m sure it will taste fine but this is quite an unusual cooking experience. There is no refrigerator left in the house so some stuff is in the RV and some in the sticks house waiting for morning to finish up the cooking.

I’m becoming more convinced that once we sell the house, retire and take to the road that the experience we’re hoping for will come to fruition. Right now, living in our sticks house driveway with most of our life in the RV and a little still in the house is complicated. Having to keep work clothes available when what we’d really like is all play clothes is a challenge in itself. I do still have my washer and dryer since it hasn’t been picked up so I’m taking advantage of that whenever I can. I definitely like having the RV washer/dryer and it works fine during the week but on weekends when there’s a lot of extras I still go in the house. I can tell that the RV washer/dryer will be sufficient for when we’re on the road and am happy we have it, as opposed to going to a laundromat on the road. When our son Chip comes home to visit he stays in the sticks house so there’s a lot of going back and forth. So many things are just unusual when living in your driveway! Chip and I were talking today about going through the various seasons in our lives. I guess we’re in the limbo season right now!

Please someone buy our sticks and bricks house!!!!!