A Year Later Rememberance: Christmas Reminders

Our Caribbean cruise was the week after Christmas of 2009 and it was wonderful seeing images of the Christmas season all over the ship. I thought it added to the "magic" of the Freedom of the Seas.

The Royal Promenade sported a giant three story Christmas tree:

Electric trains and gingerbread houses go well with Christmas:

There were small Christmas trees here and there:

A giant gingerbread village welcomed us at the Windjammer buffet!

Of course our favorite decorations were those that reminded folks of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ!

The week after Christmas was a bit different for us last year! A year later finds us looking back with thankful memories.

Merry Christmas 2010

It has been a wonderful Christmas season, this year, full of snow and festivities. Some things were snowed out, but we did get to enjoy a church Christmas play at the big Methodist church where Simon played the piano, Christina's Christmas piano recital, and our church Christmas sing/party.

On Christmas Eve we enjoyed our family reading of the Christmas narrative up at the clearing with singing, fireworks, a big warm fire, hot dogs, hot chocolate, and smores. Here are some pictures from that wonderful time:

The big fire:




Water for the hot cocoa:



Getting the smores ready:

Lisa got some giant marshmallows this year!

We didn't take any pictures of the fireworks, but they were fun and pretty and accentuated the Christmas narrative in just the right places. Matthew and Simon took care of them this year while I read.

The next morning was Christmas morning! Since this was the celebration of Jesus being born, He was now in the manger in this Nativity set for the first time:

We had gotten the tree out and decorated it this year on the 22nd, but the star doesn't come out until Christmas morning. Every time we lit the tree, we gave a 3-2-1 countdown and the family yelled "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" Now that the 25th had finally come, it had the Christmas star on it signifying the birth of Christ with the Happy Birthday banner and there were a few more presents found under the tree. (We do it that way in an attempt to make the actual day of His birthday celebration a bit more special.)


A neat aspect of this Christmas morning was the scene past the tree to the outside. I tried to get creative in this next picture by showing the snow through one of the tree branches:

A white Christmas! We got about 3 inches of snow after we went to bed on Christmas eve and it snowed on and off all day!

We woke up to an additional inch of snow on the 26th but the snow did not keep us from heading up north to Cincinnati. The roads were poor that morning, but passable. I couldn't help but think of the song, "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go! The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh, through the white and drifted snow!" We could have used a horse and sleigh on Rt. 581!

But we made it with no problems. Here is Christina, Erica, Jessica and Sarah and Timothy at Grandma's:

Timothy loved opening his presents and helping everyone else, too: Here is Lisa, Timothy, Matthew, and Simon:

Erica and Christina helping with the food:

One of the gifts Christina received was the game Apples to Apples, Bible Edition. A big group of us played and had a fun time!

One of Erica's friends from college came with us to help us celebrate. Matthew and Erica picked up TJ in Erica's car and drove all the way to Cincinnati by themselves. It was the farthest road trip either of them had taken by themselves, and on a snowy day! We were proud of them and thankfully, they had no problems. Erica let Matthew drive most of the way.

Here is TJ and Matthew: (Matthew won the initial game to 4, but we kept playing and Erica won the most hands overall)

And here are all the grandchildren in the den:

What a wonderful Christmas time it was! We kept it all simple for the most part, and kept the birth of Christ center stage through the entire season.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

A Year Later Rememberance: Jamaica

Jamaica was beautiful!  We viewed the country side via air-conditioned van which took us to a garden spot for hiking and exploration.  We then went to the Dunn River Falls and the children climbed the entire water fall!

A Year Later Remembrance: The First Evening On the High Seas

December 27th, 2009 found the Pure Water Hollow bunch leaving an overcast 65 degree Florida aboard the incredible Royale Caribbean cruise ship, Freedom of the Seas. Destination: the Caribbean!

That first evening was full of wonderment as we all just got settled in and explored a little of the ship. We felt that we had much to learn, even about the locations of things we needed to know about. We had to overcome the initial fear of getting lost aboard such an enormous vessel! There were multiple elevators, (Which elevator to take?) 13 floors, (Our staterooms were on the 6th) dining rooms to find, (Which dining room was ours? The one on the 3rd floor, not the 2nd!), and a seemingly unending array of mazes to unlock!

We did successfully find the dining room and met up with everyone in our party for our first dinner on the high seas! Along with my immediate family, our group consisted of 6 other families who joined us for this incredible trip. The really cool thing was that this group of 21 people (one was still in utero) was all my family! They were my aunts and uncle and cousins! What an awesome thing to go on a Caribbean cruise with all these members of our family that we so seldom get to see! I could say "thank you" to Nancy a hundred times over in these Year Later Remembrance posts, but I will try to refrain from repetitive thank yous here on the blog. But right now is an appropriate place to yell out one more great big, "THANK YOU, NANCY!"

Lisa, Timothy, Simon, and myself were together in one stateroom, right next door to Erica and Christina, who shared a room. Our balconies were adjoining so we had a large double balcony overlooking the ocean! Matthew roomed with Chris a few doors down the hall and their room was adjoining with Nancy and Cheri's room. This arrangement worked perfectly!

How peaceful it was to sit out on our private balcony that night, after the boys had gone to sleep. Lisa and I enjoyed the warm Caribbean breeze as it rolled off the ocean while we watched the moon-kissed waves dance upon an unending expanse of sea!

We had definitely embarked upon an adventure of a lifetime!

White Christmas Is Officially Forcasted

The weather guys have now made their first call on the amount of snow we should be getting for our white Christmas this year. Here it is:

Bear Killed During Two Day Legal Hunt

I just saw this news blurb on the Hazard TV station's website and I thought it was rather interesting. I used their headline as the title for this post:

"The cold and snowy weather did not stop a Pike County man from becoming the first person to bag a black bear during Kentucky's two-day legal hunt.

Danny Smith, of Phelps, shot the 265 pound male about 5 hours into his hunt Saturday.

Kentucky held its first legal bear hunt in 100 years last December, but hunters came up empty handed during that crippling snowstorm that left many in the dark."

I remember hearing about that bear hunt last year, but the one this year missed my ears all together. Not that I would have wanted to get in on the hunt, but I do like the emotions that are evoked by a "bear hunt" in Eastern Kentucky. Such a bear hunt conjures up images in my mind of the hardy Kentucky frontiersman 230 years ago, struggling to make a life out of the wilderness, and thankful that God had provided him hunting grounds occupied by plentiful deer, elk, bear, and smaller fur-bearing creatures!

Pure Water Hollow is located about 60 miles from where this particular bear was killed, but there have been numerous bear sightings reported very nearby over the years! I even saw a black bear myself a year or so ago! It was on the other side of the county from our homestead, but it was neat to see a black bear with my own eyes in my home county!

Speaking of big game animals, elk have also been spotted only a couple miles down the road from us!

The re-introduction of black bear and elk into Kentucky may have been a bit controversial, but I think that it's a pretty cool thing! And I believe Daniel Boone would be pleased, too!

Stories From the Cookie Jar

Erica helped Christina and Simon make cookies today to give to their piano teachers for Christmas gifts. They made chocolate chip cookies as well as chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips. They are delicious! I'm glad they all could not fit into the gift tins!

There were enough cookies to fill up the old cookie jar and more! The cookie jar we are using is an old ceramic one. The colors may have faded a bit over the years and the lid has a couple of chips missing. There are some thin cracks through the glaze. It sort of resembles one of those jars that many folks pass up at yard sales or the Good Will store, even though it may be marked ridiculously cheap. It is a very old one, going waaaay back into my childhood. I'm not sure when my mom got it, but I can remember it as far back as I have memories. It may have had different homes around the kitchen as I was growing up, but I remember mostly it's prominent place setting on our walnut hutch.

If that old cookie jar could talk, it would have some stories to tell! It would tell about many dozens of homemade cookies that it's lid gingerly protected; sugar cookies, snicker-doodles, peanut-butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and a menagerie of others over the years, all lovingly created by a mother for her adoring boys.

It may have something to say about those two little boys, as well. Tales of espionage and suspense! The cookie jar knew of their cloak-and-dagger exploits secretly into the kitchen, when all was dark. It understood how cautious they were,lifting it's lid to make the least possible noise. And I think it enjoyed sounding the alarm with the loud clanking noise when the lid was replaced!

I don't remember how long the old cookie jar has been in my home, but I'm thankful Mom gave it to us. It might now tell about the un-selfishness of four other children, who would let a cookie stay in the jar and get stale just because they each wanted to leave the last precious cookie for someone else! It would also tell about many different cooks who have baked cookies for it to hold. It would tell of
Erica, the main cookie maker in the family, and also of Christina who has lately proved her mettle in the cookie world as well! And the jar may tell you that we always love Lisa's cookies, but it would remind you that she admits that she isn't much of a cookie person.

I like this old cookie jar. It and me, we have a good understanding! I take care of it, and it takes care of me! And now I have immortalized my friend in writing and with a picture here on the blog, so it should be better to me than ever before!