december ttmmh

“So we sing carols softly, as sweet as we know
A prayer that our burdens will lift as we go
Like young love still waiting under mistletoe
We’ll welcome December with tireless hope.”

– “Snow” by Sleeping at Last

Lighting our first Advent candle in hope (and Liturgy Wood’s beautiful cards)

New floors

Oatmeal and apples and soup after a week without smelling or tasting

Finishing one book to pick up another

The Dick van Dyke show

Joel’s homemade wassail

Fire in the hearth and warm kids squirming in my lap

Lights around the neighborhood

Mauve sunset behind skeleton trees

Bennett calling them “Mary and Dofus”

Finding myself back in Port William in Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter and all the homeness that came sauntering back

The Gospel Coalition’s Songs of Hope concert

Learning, trying to split wood

Living room visit with Papa and Mema, hanging ornaments that tell the story of me

Boys at work on the greenhouse till dinnertime

Sun and sixty

That clearing at the edge of Davis’ cow pasture, where things are mostly still

“What Beauty” by Future of Forestry

Walking Papa Larry’s front yard with him and imagining it all coming alive in April

Planting bulbs and drinking Good Earth tea between holes

Hands tingling and thawing inside the house

New Christmas music from Fernando

Christmas shopping + free coffee + Ben Rector album

The seed store in downtown Kirkwood

Garden Glow at the Missouri Botanical Gardens

Grabbing A Christmas Carol from the library at dusk

Cookie bake at Leanna’s

Peeling apples for pie with Mema at her sink

Christmas rainstorm

Mark and Tina’s puppy, Jasmine

Everyone bragging on the Christmas ham

“The Polar Express”

Christmas morning sun beams falling into my room, onto my walls

New books, new violin bow

A houseful– parents rinsing dishes, married siblings at the table long after dinner, boys stoking the fire, kids playing walkie-talkie hide-and-seek in the back rooms, grandparents going and coming

Love that came down at Christmas and that lasts

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