The weatherman says it may be a snowy Christmas!

Christmas Eve!  The stockings are hung by the chimney with care. Shannon and Nathan and his folks will come for Christmas lunch tomorrow.  Meghan and Justin and the boys will be here for dinner time, and then we will all open presents, starting, of course, with the stockings.



The rest of the house is decorated and more or less ready for the family week. The boys always seem to like to look at the nativity scenes we have. This one is on our sideboard in the dining room. It was my mom's and was always placed in the stable built into our tree stand. It has been mended a few times, but I always enjoy getting it out year after year. I have another set that my brother and sister-in-law brought to us from the Holy Land many years ago. Maybe my brother remembers what year that was. I was young then, and I'm not now. I also have a miniature scene on a shelf above the kitchen since, and then there are a couple inside of ornaments on the big tree.  There is even a triangular shaped plastic nativity that I got as a child from Sunday School.



I always have a hard time getting a good picture of the Big Tree. It really is big, too big for the room. Not too tall, but too fat for our space. However, it just would not seem right to have a little tree in the room, and we didn't spring for a new skinny, tall tree yet this year. This guy is 12 feet tall, and although it is a big deal to put it up, it is not nearly as challenging as when the kids were little and we had real trees this size. We wire this one to the balcony, just to be on the safe side. Many memories hang from ornament hooks on this tree! I have some wooden ones we painted from a kit the first year we were married, gifts from all kinds of family and friends, teacher ornaments from thirty four years of students and colleagues, handmade ones from the girls, ornaments from craft shows, some bought just because we liked them, and some that hung on my childhood tree. The patchwork stocking was made for me when I was a teenager by my grandmother. I surely did not think it was so special then, but now ?



Merry Christmas from Patchwork and Pug.