Thursday, December 20, 2007

Christmas Preparations

As is normally the case with parish pastors, the last several weeks have been extremely busy as we travel through the season of Advent and prepare for our celebration of Christmas. Besides my normal pastoral duties, I've had Wednesday evening services added to my already busy schedule. Add in an unusually snowy December (and my snow-shoveling duties), and my schedule has been really quite busy. So here I am after a nearly one month hiatus getting back to the family blog.

I can report that in the past week and a half Grace has managed to begin sitting very regularly and steadily (I'll drop in a picture at the end of this post to illustrate). She's offering more and more chatter almost by the day, and we're beginning to wonder if she'll be as noisy as Lucas is, who talks constantly! She's also beginning to exhibit pretty routine separation anxiety from Mom and Dad. She'll even cry for us when Lucas is still in the room with her, which is unusual since Lucas tends to be her number one form of entertainment. Her mother and I continue to be of the opinion that she's the most lovely baby we've ever seen, but perhaps we're biased.

Lucas is ready for Christmas to come, though not in an overly-eager way. He has spent several weeks dreaming about the different Thomas the Tank Engine toys that he may receive as gifts. Dad has been scouring Ebay for a couple months finding some ridiculous deals on a whole host of items. He should be pleased, if not somewhat overwhelmed. He won't be getting the things I've purchased all at once. One thing that has perhaps kept Lucas from becoming impatient as he waits for Christmas is that we haven't really put any gifts under the tree yet. Without that visual reminder/temptation, it doesn't seem quite as imminent.

We wish everyone a very blessed Christmas. For those on our Christmas letter list, you should be receiving your letter and picture from us soon.