Snow and Neighbors

We’ve had our first real snow of the year! By this morning, we had about 6 inches and maybe one or two more by the end of the day. We spent the morning shoveling our sidewalk and driveway and the sidewalk and driveway for the elderly lady next door.

While we were out shoveling, a 10 year old boy from the next block down was out walking and stopped to play with us in the snow and help shovel a bit. He seemed a bit attention starved and had lots of fun throwing snowballs at us. After a few minutes he told me he needed to get his “gloves” out (I had noticed his bare hands and not very warm looking coat) and was surprised (though I probably shouldn’t have been) to see him pull out a pair of socks and put them on his hands. Wow. I went inside and found a pair of snow gloves that we could give him, which fit him perfectly.

When Dave said something about us going to church at 2:00, he said he sure wished he could come with us sometime. So we told him to ask his dad, and if his dad said it was okay, he could start coming to church with us. I’ll try to stop by their house sometime this week to introduce myself to his dad.

A friend from church asked me today how things were going getting to know our neighbors. We haven’t met many new people, since it’s winter and people aren’t out as much, but we are deepening relationships with the people we do know. In addition to the boy down the street this morning, I’ve spent a good bit of time in the last couple weeks with our neighbor two doors down. She is as sweet, friendly and helpful as can be. I’m really looking forward to being done with my thesis and having more time to be involved in the neighborhood and be able to be more intentional about building relationships.

Christmas Play

As we were going through a box with Christmas stuff last night, I found this story that I wrote when I was 6. My mom’s note says that it’s a play. Whatever it is, it was hilarious. It’s written in big first grader handwriting with a black crayon on many pieces of scratch paper taped end to end to form a scroll. Not sure if it's quite as funny typed out, but here it is, unedited:

First, Mary was at the well with some other ladies. They said…

Can you wait entel the Savyior comes? and saves us!

Then an angel uperd and said BE NOT AFRADE! You will be the mother of the savior.

Mary said but there are a lot of people that want to be the mother.

But God chose you Go tell Joseph

Joseph! Joseph! An angel aperd to me and said I’d have a baby but I have to go to Bethlehem

Wel, I can come with you.

Okay.

Then Mary and Joseph set off for Bethlehem. They stopt at an inn.

The inn keeper said there aren’t any rooms in the hool town

But she’s having a baby.

Well you can stay in the stable. But it’s not much

Okay Mary let’s go.

He’s right it’s not much.

Meen wile the angel Gabriel told sheperds about the Lord

At the stabel Lord Jesus was born

wighs men came to worship him

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

We got a Christmas tree last night. We’d been hoping to go cut one ourselves, but finally realized that it just wasn’t going to happen, given Dave’s schedule this year, and went to Eastern Market instead, which was way faster and easier. Since we have 9 foot ceilings now in our fab old house, we got a nice sized tree, but boy it's a lot bigger in the living room than it looked on the lot! We’ll have to remember that next year. Dave is off tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll be able to decorate the tree then.

After putting up the tree, we got out garland to put on our banister. What fun to finally have our own house, and an old one at that!

We have collected nativity scenes from around the world and have had them out for a couple weeks now. This one is from Kenya:

This is the one from Indonesia that my parents gave us for our first Christmas. Two brothers carve these and then they are sold around the world as an income generating activity:

Dave's parents gave us this one from Venezuela: