Saturday, December 10, 2016

Half-way through Advent ... and a baby

I made this year's Christmas cake at the start of November. But the sun was still shining, and there was no urgency to do anything else related to Christmas. I still have quite a large tub of mincemeat which I made last year, and one remaining Christmas pudding, both in the fridge. Since most of the family won't be coming here for Christmas this year, we won't need more than that.

I decided that Thursday would be the day for putting up our tree.  My small friends were here for the morning, so they enthusiastically sorted and placed the branches. I roughly strung the lights, and then the children hung up as many decorations as they could.

assistance from small friends in decorating our Christmas tree, in our annual custom

I'm not at all obsessive or perfectionist about the tree, and thought the final result looked pretty good:

decorated Christmas tree

Alex, however, had other ideas:

Alex the cat, wondering which decoration to attack next

I had to pick up a prone tree twice during that afternoon, resulting in it now looking like this:

the tree with many of its decorations on the floor

So long as the decorations are on the floor, the cats leave the tree alone. I may try to put them back again when they're not looking.

The girls were also quite excited about setting out my knitted nativity figures. They thought the coffee table would work well:

donkey, Mary, Joseph, baby, manger, two shepherds and lambs, all knitted

The wise men (or magi or kings) shouldn't really appear in the same tableau, but I didn't really want to put them somewhere else in the room, so we put them on the far edge of the table:


Oddly enough, other than a brief investigation, the cats haven't taken any notice of this. Here's the whole thing, in a little patch of starlight. Well, it's really sunlight, but the sun is, after all, a star.

the full scene of Jean Greenhowe's knitted nativity set, completed earlier in the year

Christmas is, of course, about the birth of the most important Baby who ever lived. But in our family, we have also been looking forward to the birth of our first granddaughter, who was due on Christmas Eve. She's the reason that her parents and brother are not coming to Cyprus for Christmas this year.

However she decided to put in an appearance a couple of weeks early, so that when we woke up on Friday morning, we had the exciting news of Esther's arrival. Here's a photo taken today of the four of them:

son, daughter-in-law, grandson and brant-new granddaughter

Although she doesn't have jaundice, she has tested positive for a Strep-B infection, which can be quite dangerous in newborns, so she and Becky have to stay in hospital for another few days. Prayers are welcome.

5 comments:

alban said...

Prayers being offered. Do keep us informed,

Cathleen said...

Praying for them.

Sue said...

Thank you, so much! She is now home, and as far as the doctors can tell, free of infection. We are all very relieved. :)

Cathleen said...

Good news!!

alban said...

Thanks be to God for working His healing through the medical staff.