Behind the Scene

As you can see as I move farther away from our Precious Moments Nativity Scene...the more chaotic the room becomes! This is sort of a "picture" of why we need to stay close to the "reason for the upcoming season"... to keep chaos and confusion out of our lives of everything that is going on around us at this time of the year! I cleared everything off the china cabinet/buffet this afternoon and then dusted and polished it and then opened up boxes and placed each character carefully into the scene for my Precious Moments characters to portray the Nativity for another Christmas season. We have been adding characters to this scene since 1981...so our 31st year to use the original pieces of Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, the shepherds and the four little sheep. In some ways it seems like yesterday when I came across this set at Castner Knott here in town and in others it seems like a million years ago...funny how time can be perceived! After I purchased the original set we started adding additional pieces when we found new ones and others were added by family members as gifts. This will probably be the only day that the wood on the buffet shines and reflects the Precious Moments characters...as it will gather dust all too quickly and I don't do a lot of dusting once I get decorations arranged. I figure that the floor of the stable where Jesus was born was pretty dusty/dirty...so the farther into the season the more realistic my scene becomes! I handed Woody the box that has our Christmas snowman cookie jar and had him exchange our year-round elephant cookie jar for the Christmas one...no cookies for it...yet...probably no baking of cookies till after our family Thanksgiving! That was his decorating job for the day! Now to put the boxes in front of the china cabinet back upstairs and then to find places to store or use in other places the items that are now residing on the dining room table that don't belong there! What I have started is quite a "process!" And, now you have a view "behind the scene" of what a mess it can be prior to everything finding a place...either as a decoration for Christmas or a place to be stored till after Christmas. You should see the hall upstairs...and all boxes haven't even been taken out of the Christmas closet yet. 'TIS THE SEASON!

Woody got up early and "I'm pretty sure" that he went on a walk, but I forgot to ask him so I don't know how far he walked. We both went to the early church service and then went to Sunday School. He taught his sixth-grade boys' class. He read, watched a library DVD and watched football this afternoon. He has now gone to the evening church service. He just returned...and he walked six miles this morning. It started raining a little while ago. I think that we are supposed to get quite a bit of rain over the next few days. (Probably so much for roofing this week...time will tell!) Erin called us this afternoon. She needed to use a computer lab to complete a project and it was locked..."deadlineitis" was getting to her, I think! I did suggest a possible solution, but don't know if it worked out or not. The sound of popcorn popping is calling so enough "words" for tonight!