Doug and I were married on New Year’s Eve in the afternoon in 1975. It was a small wedding. In fact, compared to our children’s weddings, it was tiny with about sixty people in attendance. Doug’s dad did the officiating and his brother Evan was the best man. I had two bridesmaids, my sister Marla and my good friend Roseann.
It was the seventies (which explains a lot). We had a traditional wedding with a few exceptions: no veil, no train, no registry, no decorations to speak of. (No Mark LaMoreaux pictures…now that was the only big mistake.) My mom made my dress and the bridesmaid dresses; I made Doug’s wedding shirt, complete with embroidery; I wore knee-high boots under my dress and my going-away “outfit” involved (I think) a plaid flannel shirt and cords. We had banana bread at the reception (among other things, but no wedding cake), and I believe we opened gifts at the reception. Continue reading ‘The Best Thing I Ever Did’
January is known as the month to reorganize (as you can see by the covers of many women’s magazines). For some reason, this is just what we want to do. All of us! It’s time to clean out the closets, toss out the old and replace it with the new. It’s time to turn over the new leaf, set some new goals, start some new projects, and get a fresh start. There is something so promising about a new year. We feel hopeful and eager to try again, this time with better results.
But January can also be a time when some can start to feel a little down and discouraged. This may come from the big let down after the excitement of Christmas (or by the extra pounds from the fudge). If you have allowed yourself to become too elevated with all the excitement, your body and soul have to make an adjustment to get you back to normal. But sometimes an over-correction can send your spirits into the tank. Continue reading ‘Lift Up Your Hearts’
So the snow dune on our front porch has grown to be enormous and is being met by the snow sculpture falling down off the top of our porch. That’s my good man out shoveling! The bad news is that the temp is rising. It snowed in the night and most of the morning, but now we are having (no joke) rain. That means all these fluffy mountains of snow are going to melt or freeze over. Either way, it won’t be nice. But it is still beautiful at the moment. The rain hasn’t brought all the snow down off the trees yet. They are still heavily flocked, but their time may be short. But we had a magnificently white Christmas!
I hope you all had a nice relaxing day-after-Christmas. I think we had our house “put back together” by sometime mid-afternoon. But it was all well worth it, and we can’t wait to do it all again. The N.D. family spends the night with us Christmas Eve, and it is much more of a workout for them than it is for us. They haul all their gifts to our house, and then they haul them all home again on Christmas Day! That is what I call self-sacrifice! We have such a fun time with them.
The Luke and Lizzie group come over mid-morning for the second round of unwrapping. And normally, the Merkle gang would show up around the same time. (We are hopeful that next Christmas they might be here with us.) We had our late Christmas breakfast, just like all of you, no doubt. This is just as much a part of the Christmas ritual as the stockings and the dinner. Then after all the opening and what not, some of the kids Continue reading ‘Highlights’
 
We wish you all a very blessed and wonderful Christmas! We’ve had a very sweet and blessed day so far, and the Christmas roast is in the oven. Bekah’s goose made it to her table, and she says it was even good! I hope you can see Rory having fun in the snow behind us here on our front porch. Brrrr!
After I had eight or nine grandkids I started wondering if stuffing stockings for them was a bit much. I mean, after all, their parents do stockings for them already. So one year I decided to skip it. That was the year that Knox asked me a couple weeks before Christmas, “Nana, are you going to do stockings for us this year?” Well of course I told him the truth. “Of course I am.” And I have never looked back. Here are the stockings of the eight grandkids who live in the USA. Nothing like a vacant coat rack to hang them on. And here is my pile of “stuff” that I need to cram in them all. I resorted this year to some rather bulky clothing items….hope that isn’t cheating!
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