And so it’s Christmas

First, Merry Christmas! Second, today is a very important day in history.  This is Pearl Harbor Day. On this day in 1941, Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii, was bombed by over three hundred Japanese warplanes. Thus began our involvement in World War II. We’ll never forget and we’ll never take that for granted. Thank you to all of our brave military forces who have sacrificed and served.  Here is a salute to you:

And yet, life has to go on. So we celebrate and we rejoice, even while we miss those who are no longer with us.  I thought I’d share some Christmas pictures. We have our house decorated and since this is our first Christmas in this house, everything old is new again. We have special items we’ve kept through the years and we have fun new decorations, too. Here are a few of my favorites:

First, a Jim Shore nativity scene given to me by a dear friend who was my Secret Pal in my church women’s circle. I put it in a new location this year, of course, but when I was dusting this table and moving the figurines around, I accidentally knocked Joseph over. And broke both of his hands off! When my husband walked in the front door, I was standing there with the broom and dust pan. I said, “Joseph doesn’t have his hands anymore. I found one but the other is shattered.” Then I glanced at where my husband stood with one foot on the rug in front of the door. “Don’t move,” I shouted.  “I see Joseph’s other hand by your big toe.” Since these hands were about a fourth of an inch in size, I felt victorious. So Joseph is now super-glued and one hand looks like an attempt at a high-five, but at least he’s intact. But this fiasco made me think about that tiny baby. He really is the super-glue that holds me together when I want to fall apart. The Baby Jesus holds us all together and he mends all wounds. So now this special set has even more meaning to me:

 P.S. I put Santa in there, too. To remind me to still listen for the bells.

One of my favorite things in years past was a tiny shoe tree that I used in our power room. I gave that one away when we moved to Florida, but this year I took our “downsized” tree and decorated it with the few special shoes I kept. It’s just outside my office door so it makes me smile each time I pass it. It also has miniature purses and a shopping fairy, a chocolate fairy and some booker lover ornaments on it. It lights up our den at night.

Another special decoration is this Beach Santa that a friend gave me. I love dolphins and this one is always trying to jump through Santa’s wreath. It makes me happy see it on the shelf in the den:

And last, we put our big tree in the sunroom/library room. We can see it from the den so it lights up the other side of the house. We saved a few of our favorite ornaments from our Sneaky Santa exchanges with church friends and some of our mementoes from our children.  They go on this tree:

So there you have it. I’ve enjoyed decorating this year. We gave away a lot of things, but we seem to have managed to keep a lot, too. Tell me if you’ve ever had a Christmas accident such as mine involving Joseph. Broken ornaments? Crashed trees? Broken figurines? (I knew a friend who’s young son knocked over a tree full of antique ornaments and broke most of them. They were visiting someone’s home when it happened.) This is a wonderful time of year but sometimes things go terribly wrong. We manage to get past them with our Super-Glue, don’t we?

I hope you are having fun with Christmas so far 🙂