As Promised

Thank you for all of your prayers for my health. I spent two days straight in bed, and a third one confined mostly to my living room, but I think all the rest did the trick, and I'm back on the mend. Mind you, I woke up this morning in a fit of coughs, but really, I'm feeling much better. That being the case, I thought I'd post the promised pictures of Christmas joy spread throughout my house.

First, the front door. I found this wreath at Target, but it came with a fairly sad looking bow. So, using my mad bow-making skills acquired long ago from a class at Michaels (yes, I say that with total pride: I took a bow-making class at Michaels), I fashioned a new one, and now we have quite the cheery wreath greeting our guests.

When you enter the living room, you may or may not notice right away another acquisition from Target sitting on the piano. The box calls him a "Fiber Optic Woodland Santa", and I think he's my favorite new decoration this year. You might not notice him at first, because he fits so perfectly with the regular decor of my house. So much so, that I might just leave him up year-round. Okay, maybe not.

As weird as it might sound, I looked at every Woodland Santa in the store, and picked this one for his eyes. My dad has a certain look when he's either joking or he knows a secret (like, perhaps, someone's Christmas present), and in my family we say he's "twinkling". It's the look in his eyes that does it, and somehow I feel like my Woodland Santa's eyes are twinkling. Call me crazy.

The other feature of the Woodland Santa (can you tell I like him?) is that he is fiber-optic. Yes, fiber-optic. Now, it's hard to do it justice in a photograph, but I tried anyway. His beard and his robe and part of his bag of gifts light up and change colors. It's pretty cool-looking, to the point where I can just sit and watch him for awhile.

Okay, okay, moving on. My favorite decoration which isn't new is my set of reindeer. They're gorgeous. They're classy, and how they stand is just noble. You know how the Bible talks about all creation glorifying the Lord? Well, it's as if these reindeer know that they are meant to commemorate the birth of Jesus, and so they put on their best display. Call me crazy again.

They sit next to the TV in the family room, so when you sit on the couch and the TV isn't on, you have a pretty sweet view. I'm actually sitting on the couch right now enjoying that view. But, the thing that ultimately makes the Strudel house feel Christmasy is the tree. There's something about the smell and look and feel of a real tree which just can't be achieved with a fake one. I won't say I'll never have a fake one - sometimes that's all you can do, or it's more practical, or whatever - but I'll stick to the real ones as long as I can. In my previous post, I showed it in all it's glory lit up at night. That really is it's best time. However, it's still quite enjoyable during the day.

In my previous post, I also mentioned how my roommates put up with my insane excitement about getting a tree, and went with me to pick it out. This is my "I'm really excited and thrilled and overjoyed that we're at the Christmas tree lot picking out a real tree" pose. You can tell how excited I am by the raised shoulders and clasped hands. Oh, and Robin's excited, too.

Here we all are with the display tree at the lot. Somehow, Diana didn't get the message that we were all taking a sweet smiling picture. Oh us.

The nice guys at the lot loaded it into my car (oh boy, am I glad I have a CR-V), and fortunately we had some nice guys at home to unload it into our house. Steven and Jonny-Mo did a fabulous job carrying it in and setting it up in the stand I had.

Unfortunately, the tree was a bit too big for the stand I had originally bought, so we had to return to Target for a new one. Thus, we did it all over again, this time without the guys' help.
Yep, that's me and Diana protruding from underneath the lovely branches of the Tannenbaum. Robin did a fabulous job of keeping it from crashing on us and looking beautiful all at the same time.

Somehow I don't have pictures of us decorating the tree, but it was quite festive, as you can imagine. And the result is one fabulous looking noble fir.I just knew you needed to see that picture one more time.

To make an already long post longer (why not? It's Sunday!), there is something I love perhaps even more than the Christmas season. Okay, not perhaps...absolutely. There is something I absolutely love more than the Christmas season. I love the community of friends God has given me. Particularly, I am so grateful for the staff team I am blessed to be a part of. Last night the guys came over, and we sat talking and playing games and just truly enjoying one another's company. Steven asked us our highlights of the semester, and we recounted our time together through a series of highlights and anti-highlights. No, not lowlights, but anti-highlights. The coolest thing was that even with our anti-highlights, there was a sense that we had been through them together, and that made all the difference. From break-ups to to emotional break-downs to car break-ins to car accidents to even a murder on campus, we were all affected differently, but we were all affected because we are a family. I'm not sure it's possible to convey in words what that means to me, but it's truly this glorious gift for which I am incredibly grateful.

"He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" - Romans 8:32