Long days of winter begin.....

As I started packing away the ornaments, Asherel walked by and wryly commented, "I am surprised you didn't start putting those away at 12:01 a.m. the day after Christmas."
"I thought about it," I said.
I love Christmas decorations, until the day after Christmas. Then I am ready to move on to Spring and maybe even summer vacation. The decorations were up for a solid month, and I had to rearrange our house to fit the Christmas tree in the right corner, so everything was a little cramped and cluttered for a month. I hate clutter. In a flurry of cleaning, while the boys still slept, I carted Christmas away. Now the dreary long months of winter stretch before me.

I would have been cross country skiing instead of cleaning if Mother Nature had cooperated, but she had not. She stopped snowing before there was barely a coating on the grass, and the roads were clear. I did put on my skis and do a few laps in the backyard, in case it was the last snow we saw in ten years.
I used my imagination to provide the excitement during the 1/16 mile loops.
"Is that a bear I see in the distance?" I asked my Pretend Ski Friend.
"I don't think so..." she answered, "In fact, I believe it is a snow covered lounge chair. But they are easily mistaken for bears."
I careened down the "hill" and did my giant shalom around the many dog poop piles.  While it was hard to contain the exhilaration from my little venture into the giant backyard wilderness, I tired of the game after three laps and headed back inside.
"You were only out there five minutes!" exclaimed Asherel.
"Yes, but I had seen all there was to see in four," I explained.

So we have two more days of my beloved boys afterwhich they return to real life. Then our season of craziness commences. We have two final months to build and perfect our helicopter and our trebuchet. There are deadlines for 3 art contests in the next 6 weeks, and we are about a thousand pages behind in biology. Honeybun has an agility trial mid January and we have to schedule some snow boarding trips so Asherel can use her new snowboard. My new art semester starts, and this year is the year I find an agent to represent me and sell my books to an adoring- public- in- waiting.

I look at my clean living room with the same joy I looked at my new Christmas living room a month ago. I know that soon I will not have enough time to clean or sit very long to reflect. It has been a wonderful Christmas vacation but the peace and leisure is about to be sucked away as we hit the new year running. I left one little piece of Christmas on display, however. I left the little creche Asherel made me on the piano where the morning sun rests before marching on with the day.  I left two little angels to guard it- one a gift from my son, the other a gift from our dear friend Polly. Those three things will keep me anchored during the storm of frenzy about to rage around us. The three things that I need to save time and energy and love for- God, family, and friends.

Job 27:10
¹⁰ Will they find delight in the Almighty?
   Will they call on God at all times?