Wonderful Christmas

Merry Christmas!

This started out as a post about the wonderful music I was privileged to be part of for our parish Christmas masses. But as I reflected on that, including my small part in it, I quickly realized that I was in danger of getting my Christmas celebration a bit out of context.

Christ, my Savior, is born! The eternal Word has taken on human flesh, and now my life contains a joy for which I could not otherwise hope!

Love has come!

Welcome Nic!!

Our newest grandson was born yesterday, and I hope his mom doesn't kill me for posting her post-partum picture on the site! (And it still amazes me how great she looks after childbirth.)

Children are such a joy!

Next up: we'll see how "big" sister (at 16 months) manages to adjust to not being the center of the universe!

Nice weekend

Y'know sometimes things are really great, and you just have to enjoy them.

First off, my bride of (almost) 26 years got canned on Friday, for circumstances that were only minimally under her control. Oh, wait, that's supposed to be the bad news. But she'll now be available to watch the grandkids on a regular basis, which is going to be important as soon as our anticipated newest grandson is born. Meanwhile, she's free to help our daughter out in these last few days of her pregnancy and the first few weeks of having a new son to take care of along with her 16-month old daughter (who is cute and bright as can be). We took her mind off of the firing by watching a chick flick (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days), which was small sacrifice compared to having her dwell on how her day had gone.

Saturday was plenty busy, with a great men's group meeting in the morning, a cycling team lunch (we've started early discussion of participating in the Race Across America in 2008; we may all be crazy, but we're also all excited about it!), and then a company Christmas party in the evening. It could have been hectic, and got a little anxious in the late afternoon, but by and large it was great. My wife gave me (us) my (our) joint anniversary/Christmas gift, a very nice new digital camera that we're going to use to take photos and video of our new grandson and of course the rest of the crew throughout the holidays. I've been wanting us to have a decent camera for at least 20 years!

Sunday, very nice Mass, with great Advent music. Then out to the tree farm where we've gotten our Christmas tree for over a dozen years. We saw several people we know, including one a riding buddy and his family (one of whom I called by the wrong name - sorry Zack!). We got our tree in record time. I told T. that I thought I'd found the secret of getting her to choose a tree efficiently -- which I think I have -- then told her it was to tease her mercilessly for about a day beforehand about how picky she is -- which isn't it. Honey, just in case you're reading this, I'm not going to tell you!!

After getting the tree up and in water, we picked up the older 4 grandkids and had them over for dinner. After evensong, the (currently) youngest granddaughter came over, too, so it was a great family evening to cap off a wonderful weekend.