Have you ever had a secondhand Christmas tree? We hadn’t until this year… but I’ll hold that for a moment.

Since the birth of Keziah, much has taken place, but for my part, few photos have been taken. In fact, much to my chagrin, I discovered that though I photographed a dress made for Keziah, I took no pictures of my precious niece until yesterday! (That picture will come a little later.)

Another arrival, though much less cute than Keziah, was a baby Flemish giant rabbit. Smokey is very friendly and hopefully will make a good mother one day. (And no, she’s not usually in the house!)

The Christmas season slipped by in a hurry and January came upon us almost unawares.  Part of the cause for this was perhaps the fact that it hardly felt like Christmas. After an early snow in October, no more arrived, in fact the weather turned unseasonably warm so that on the 24th, when we did our traditional Christmas concerts at the nursing homes, none of us brought jackets with us and several were in short sleeves!

Notwithstanding, the Christmas spirit reigned indoors with Christmas carols playing, Christmas lights shining, Christmas baking… and of course the Christmas tree! A used one. Usually Stephen is the guy for finding things in big garbage, but he wasn’t the one to reclaim this object. When picking Jonathan up from work right before his holiday began, Mommy observed that the company Christmas tree acquired some weeks before was gone. She learned from Jonathan that it had been taken down because no one would be in to water it for two weeks. So, a team was dispatched to rescue the tree from beside the garbage bin. It was a laughable event: never since we have lived in this location has there been such a bushy Christmas tree in our living room! It was fun, though, and Caleb helped to decorate.

And then, the week after Christmas, the snow finally arrived! And so did the cold!

But we enjoyed getting out to play in it. 🙂

Yesterday, the rain returned. Though it didn’t wash away the snow, it did keep the young people indoors during and after our monthly men’s meeting. To keep the young ones occupied, a game was produced: a several dozen little “prizes” (little pencils, erasers, chocolates, etc.) were wrapped up within a huge ball of cellophane. In only a few seconds, each player had to unwrap as much cellophane as possible in order to get at these prizes. When their time was up, they had to pass the ball along to the next person. Since the objects were scattered throughout the ball, each participant got multiple treats. The kids loved it! And the adults enjoyed watching and helping out where an extra hand was needed. It was wonderful to see how the children helped each other!

And of course the really little ones played at other things…

and wondered if the ice cream was really supposed to be left out for two hours…

and were cuddled… 🙂