The Cahill's

We are at my parent’s house for Christmas vacation. Today, cousins Connor and Abbie came over to play so we decided to build a fire.

Lance enjoyed throwing sticks at the fire. He would go way off, find a special leaf and bring it back for the fire. While burning some tomato vines we used a sheet to make smoke signals.

Once we had a good fire we had our traditional burning of the Christmas tree.

Everyone stood at a safe distance to watch. Lance was a little scared.

Now what should we do with all these coals? Roast marshmallows of course!

We pulled out a few sticks to make a small roasting fire for Lance.

Katie and Connor sit at the big fire – Connor one-ups Katie in the marshmallow dept.

After getting the boys situated I turn around to find Abbie trying to load five “march-messos” on her stick!

Mmmmmm-mmmmm goood!

Nativity – I just looked up this word and it means “place of birth or origin” though the word is now synonymous with Christ’s birth. Tuesday I was at the Dallas Arboretum and got to see a collection of over 500 renditions of the birth of Jesus – or a Nativity scene.

There seemed to be a set from every country. Each tended to be made with materials or styles native to their origin.

I liked this one made out of cornhusks. The settings (a barn or shed) made me think of growing up, spending my mornings and evenings caring for animals, playing in the hay, hearing the “cattle lowing, the chickens squawking, goats baaing and horses nickering a greeting. I saw many births out in that barn and the little critters thrived in their environment…but I wouldn’t have wanted to have my own babies out there!

This one is for my Mom – it’s paper quilling. The palm tree reminds me of the area where she grew up – on the coast of Texas.

The tiniest ones were in a nutshell. Jesus’ birthplace was considered a small, insignificant little town. “And thou Bethleham, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall come…the ruler of Israel.” Micah 5:2

Some of the sets had unusual themes like this one made of car parts. But the circumstances of Christ’s birth was unusual too. Crowded out of house and home, born with the animals, angels for a birth announcement and shepherds as the first visitors – not quite like the hospital births of today! His birth also sparked a mass slaughter of children, brought foreign dignitaries to his home and allowed one old man to die in peace. (Sound odd? go read Matthew 2 and Luke 2).

And finally, there were a few sets that were downright strange (I missed the rubber ducky one). John 3 talks about a strange birth too – being born again. Christ was born so we could claim a new birthplace, one that identifies us not to geography or even our parents, but to God. Think about it. Where are you from?

Friday night was a date night for us! Brian’s work was hosting their Christmas party at the Gaylord resort. So we dressed up, dropped the kids off at Brian’s grandparents and arrived early to enjoy the decorations and the time alone.

We enjoyed 1.5 million twinkling lights, 5,600 feet of garland, 2,300 wreaths, and 10,000 ornaments. There was an indoor river walk and miniature trains running all over the place.

I read online that there was a life size gingerbread house so we had to check it out. It had 35,000 M&M’s 1000 bricks of gingerbread and who knows how much frosting.

I liked the gingerbread people too

After enjoying an hour to ourselves we joined the party for some small talk and hors d’oeuvres before dinner started.

This is Brian’s boss, Adrian and his wife, Mikaela – they are originally from Romania and in talking with them I managed to remember one word in their language from my trip there four years ago.

And this is Perry, the CEO of Nexstar.

The end of our wonderful banquet – a beautiful dessert trio.

(Thanks to Sandy for some of the pictures).