Tonight a friend and I drove around for an hour or more looking at Christmas lights, a Christmas tradition that must not be forgotten! There were so many pretty houses this year. It's always been a secret wish of mine to have a house to decorate with Christmas lights. My dad has never let us do it at my house, but hopefully someday I will be able to. :)


One thing I hate, though, are those blow-up things you put in your yard. No thanks. It seemed like on one street we drove down just about every yard had one or more of these...yikes! I'll just stick with the pretty, twinkly lights.

The outdoor Christmas lights, green and red and gold and blue and twinkling, remind me that most people are that way all year round--kind, generous, friendly and with an occasional moment of ecstasy. But Christmas is the only time they dare reveal themselves.--Harlan Miller

Christmas is for...

Ugly sweater parties.

Need I say more? :)

Housing construction

I've been horrible. My postings have not been daily for the last 2 days! But I sorta have an excuse...I had get pictures for these posts before I could post them, and I had to attend several events to get those pictures! Anywho...here is the next thing I love about the Christmas season. Gingerbread houses.

We had a Navigators party this week, which included a house-building competition. I was teamed up with Chelsea and Tyler...I'd say we built a pretty darn good house! (It was the only one that was fully enclosed). We didn't win, but that's okay. It's still delicious- in fact, I am eating part of the roof as I type this!

Look at these mad skills!

This is the house that won..."beach-front property." Note the diving board.

This one had lots of gummy bears, which were deemed as Ewoks from Star Wars. It even had its own theme music from Star Wars, too...pretty epic indeed.

White Christmas?

There are only 13 short days until winter officially begins. And so far it's been unseasonably warm. However, I am not complaining one bit.

Last year was pretty epic. We had 2 snow days in a row...this is a big deal! Apparently there hadn't been a snow day in like 6 years. This is what it looked like.

And last year, like the song says, I was definitely dreaming of a White Christmas. My dream came true...but it was a little too white for me. It snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed on Christmas Eve and the services at almost every church were cancelled. We barely made it 7 miles to my grandma's house and had to leave early. It kept snowing the next day and the next...it was like all my white Christmases were combined into one. Too much! I remember saying that I wouldn't care if this Christmas was NOT a white Christmas...apparently my wishful thinking worked!

Of course I do love snow. But it can wait, and I will be happy. :)

For everyone

I had a terrible time coming up with something to write about for today...

But finally, finally, I was inspired. Tonight I was reminded that Christmas is for everyone. Jesus is for everyone.

I had signed up to "share my special talents" at a retirement center nearby in town. This included playing piano and singing...we were not very prepared, but the older folks still loved it! As we stood up front singing our way through second and third verses of songs we weren't very sure of, I had the chance to look around the room at everyone. It kind of amazed me that a bunch of college kids were united with 70, 80, and 90-somethings, all joining in singing the same songs. It was so neat to have that connection!

As I was choosing the songs to play for tonight, I came across a song that I sang on Christmas eve at my grandma's church a few years ago. It's not very well known, but it has a great message- no matter how we picture baby Jesus, we are all still worshiping the same true God. No one knows exactly what he looked like; we can only speculate. It is comforting to know that it does not matter if we picture him as red, brown, yellow, black, or white! I posted the lyrics to the song here:


Some Children See Him


Some children see him lily white, 
The baby Jesus born this night.
Some children see him lily white,
With tresses soft and fair.


Some children see him bronzed and brown,
The Lord of heav'n to earth come down.
Some children see him bronzed and brown,
With dark and heavy hair.


Some children see him almond-eyed,
This Savior whom we kneel beside.
Some children see him almond-eyed,
With skin of yellow hue.


Some children see him dark as they,
Sweet Mary's Son to whom we pray.
Some children see him dark as they, 
And ah! They love him, too!


The children in each different place,
Will see the baby Jesus' face
Like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace,
And filled with holy light.
O lay aside each earthly thing
And with thy heart as offering,
Come worship now the infant King,
'Tis love that's born tonight!


It doesn't matter what we look like, or how old we are...Jesus is for all.




(P.S.- This is my 100th post!)

It's a wrap.

Lately it seems I've been doing lots and lots of present wrapping. But thankfully for me, it's always been something I've loved to do. Really, if I could have a career wrapping gifts, I totally would. Well, maybe not for life...perhaps then I wouldn't love it so much anymore. :P

A fond memory of mine is of my aunt Gina teaching me how to curl ribbon. This was a huge deal! Usually scissors were off-limits, but for once I was told to pick them up and put my fingers dangerously near the blades to make ribbon curly! Oh man. Curling ribbon was definitely a hobby of mine for about a week.

One thing about wrapping presents that drives me completely crazy, though, is hair. Why is it that a hair ALWAYS happens to get stuck under your tape? You have a perfect package, so neatly encased in such pretty paper...and suddenly you see it. A hair. You try to pull it out from under the tape, but that is only successful about half the time. Your next option is to try to see if you can peel the tape back, remove the hair, and press the tape back in place without tearing the paper. If this doesn't work, the hair may have to just be left be...definitely not cool! I was complaining about this the other day, but then I realized that, while wrapping my presents, I was sitting on the floor where I brush my hair every day. Hmph. I guess I'll move elsewhere for the rest of my presents...such an ordeal!

Christmas Magic

Saturday was a fun day for my friends and me. We traversed to Lincoln for the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra's "Deck the Halls" concert. It was so wonderful! We had planned to go to the Nutracker at the Orpheum theater in Omaha, but the only tickets left for us to buy were too expensive and, well, we are college students after all.

Every year since I was about ten my family and I have gone to see the Nutcracker. Seriously, it just isn't Christmas without it. I remember vividly coming out of the show, entranced by the magic of Russia and Christmas and dancing and beauty, and being so very taken with the cityscape. It was snowing, and the snow swirled softly against the blackened night sky. All around glowed city lights and I could hear the clip-clopping of the horse-drawn carriages. To me, it was magic.

So this year, after finding out the Nutcracker was no longer a possibility, we decided to check to see what the Lied Center had to offer. It turned out to be a great concert that definitely helped us to get in the Christmas spirit! There was even dancing from the Nutcracker! And they played my favorite song, Sleigh Ride. :)

Although I wasn't able to continue my Nutcracker tradition this year, Lincoln certainly had a lot to offer. The city was so beautiful with its lights...traffic lights, storefront lights, Christmas lights...they were all pretty. The concert provided a magical feeling for sure! As Christmas day nears, the Christmas spirit continues to grow...all we need is some snow, right? Hmmm...maybe I'll blog about that later. :)