The first day of winter ...

Yesterday was the first official day of winter ... no doubt about that in West Michigan! We were expecting Adam and Emily to arrive mid-day Sunday, but they surprised us and arrived late Saturday night. They wisely paid attention to the weather reports and drove straight on through from Minneapolis instead of making a two-day trip out of it.
When I came home from Super Saturday, Mr. Jones had the little candles in our windows lit and the Christmas tree lights ... I thought he did this just for me so that I could see how pretty the house looked when I drove down the street ... but actually, he turned them on because Adam and Emily were home!

We had a nice time visiting with them Saturday night, and they took the opportunity to wrap just a few presents ...

Sunday morning, we awoke to near Blizzard conditions and received almost eight more inches of the white stuff before it was over! Thomas K. stayed inside most of the day yesterday. He is very frustrated with the bitter cold and the knee-deep snow ...

We don't know where we are going to put any more snow ... and there is a system that promises us another half foot tomorrow!

Our deck is so drifted over it just blends in with the back yard! We heard from Jes and Di late Saturday night. They called us from Tulsa, Oklahoma after being on the road for almost 14 hours. They were hoping to drive through to Springfield, Missouri before stopping for some rest. We hope to hear from them today ... they were going to try to arrive some time in the middle of the night last night over at Diana's folks ~ so we'll have to wait and see! Just three more days until Christmas. I don't think any of us are worried about NOT having a white one!

Our magical winter wonderland ...

Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean;
wash me
and I will be
whiter
than snow.

Create in me a clean heart, O God ...
Psalm 51:7 and 10 NLT

Washed clean, pristine. Purified. Totally forgiven. How beautifully a fresh fluffy snowfall illustrates God's wonderful grace ...

Since about 3:00 this morning, we received just under 12 inches of fresh snow ... on top of the three inches we already had. Schools and events city-wide were cancelled! No noisey school busses ... and no snow plows came by our street all day.
I walked out in the woods for awhile early this afternoon ... knee deep in places ... amazing the quiet and the accompanying peace ...
We are officially snowed in! The mail didn't even get delivered today ... except our doorbell just rang (at 7:45 p.m.) and it was a package (addressed TO Adam) from UPS!

Weather reports tell us that we are just going to get ourselves dug out from this storm before another one comes our way late tomorrow night! And another storm is expected Tuesday night!

Our neighborhood looked so beautiful this afternoon. I layered up and walked everywhere ... and then I reluctantly returned to our house to help shovel out the driveway. Mr. Jones did most of the work today! I was too enthralled with the beauty of it to care if we got out or not!


I promised I would post these pictures for dear Sabrina to see ... her family is unable to make the trip "home" this Christmas ... she, and they, will be sadly missed!

A lovely party and a very cool layout ...

This year Mr. Jones and I were invited to the Thursday Night train gang's Christmas party, hosted by Jerry and Pat, who live out in Coopersville. Since he retired, Mr. Jones has been getting reacquainted with lots of old train friends around town; friends that go way back, all the way to when he and Nia were active with train clubs. He now regularly spends Monday evenings over at his friend, Thom's, house (Hudsonville) working on his layout. All throughout the week too, Mr. Jones is working on computer programs and other projects for Thom. And he spends any number of Wednesdays over at his friend Bruce's house, working on his layout as well. The Thursday night crowd is a bunch of these train buddies who get together and watch train videos (yes, there is such a thing), drink soda, eat whatever is offered to them, and chum around like only train folk do!
There were 10 couples at the party ... some folk I met this summer, but a few for the first time last night. The food was yummy, the friendships wonderful, and I think a great time was had by all! Right after dinner, the owner of the house asked if anyone wanted to see his layout downstairs. I was definitely interested because these people do serious trains! I was curious as to how much of the basement was consumed in this fellow's layout. Wow!

This was one of the coolest layouts I have ever seen! Such detail! So realistic!

I was very impressed with Jerry's artistry and talent to put all of this together! He has modeled the Bulldog lines, influenced by New York Central, pre-1968 before the merger of Penn Central (all of this info comes compliments of Mr. Jones) ...

Many of these building's roofs lift off with amazing details inside ... so much fun to see and explore!

There was a gift exchange, which no one told me about ... but I received several beautiful gifts from these nice ladies. This ornament is hand painted and designed by Shirley. How completely perfect for our tree!

This pretty ornament was made by Dee, wife of Al, the couple who live up near Croton Dam and whose place we visited late in the summer (see post from August 2008). Well, next year I will have to be prepared with gifts, now won't I. It is always a bit awkward to be on the receiving end of a gift with nothing to give back! I think everyone understood that this was our first year, so I won't worry about it. I'm glad we were invited!

Five very short hours ...

Yesterday's visit with Nathan and Nia went by too quickly! With a huge winter storm on the way, the McNeil's needed to head out of town early to try and beat the worst it.

We did all of our usual stuff around here and had so much fun just watching the children play.

Nia Madelynn is such a love. She is a very smart little one, catches on to new activities very quickly, and is a snuggler ... she really did amazingly well these four weeks so far away from her home ...

Nathan Paul requested some play time just with "Carol" (that's me ... I'm not sure WHY he referred to me that way today, several times as a matter of fact!) ~ so Nathan and I spent a lot of time in the basement playroom. We set up the blocks, built an elaborate garage for the micro-machine cars, made special roads out of the other blocks, and had a great time. I don't think it's grandpa that he wanted to exclude as much as his little sister. Nia does tend to interrupt just about everything Nathan sets up to play with!

Nathan loves music and we have a lot of nice children's CDs. At one point he looked at me and asked me if we had "the all is calm all is bright song" and really beamed when I put on "Silent Night" for him to hear. He enjoys singing and very much likes to be sung to!

Grandpa and Nia got lonely for us upstairs and finally came down to run trains, which everyone enjoyed very much. Nathan was especially fascinated with the tunnels ...

It was great being able to spend quality grandparent time over an extended four-week period with these two beautiful kiddos. We are praying them safely back to San Antonio and counting the days until the end of March when we see them again ... and meet baby Lottie for the first time!

Nick's birthday AND anniversary ...

It's bad enough that Nick's birthday is one week before Christmas and so blends in each and every year to that great and wonderful holiday, and is always overshadowed by it. There is really nothing a person can can do about the date of their birth! I am sensitive about Nick's birthday being so close to Christmas and used to try to make it a distinct and special day for him. But when he and Rachel CHOSE to get married on the 18th of December ... well ... keeping his birthday separate from their anniversary is sometimes difficult!

Nick at Joe's Crab Shack (San Antonio)
October 2008

Once Nick and Rachel had set the date for their wedding, Nick joked that at least he wouldn't forget when it was he got married! So today is Nick's 28th birthday as well as he and Rachel's 4th wedding anniversary. Congratulations you guys. I looked back through all of the pictures we took during our fall trip to Texas and we didn't snap one single shot of Nick and Rachel together, without either Nia and Nathan in the picture as well ... and actually, most of our fall pictures were of Nathan and Nia (grandparents can be so obnoxious). Most of the following pictures of them were taken from our spring trip.

Nice family shot at a park in Houston

Aren't these hats hilarious?
(Old Town Spring, TX)

Riding the train at the Oil Ranch (Houston)

Watching Andrew try to lasso a cow at
The Oil Ranch

This plaque hangs on the dining room wall
of their apartment in San Antonio ...

These have been four pretty momentous years for this young couple. They have moved no less than four times and have added three beautiful children (and I've completely lost track of the number of dogs and cats) to their family. Perhaps they should take a year off from moving and babies and just rest up a bit! :) I must say, however, that visiting them at each new location has been very fun and sometimes quite an adventure for us. Grandpa Jones and I wish them all the best for this year of 2009 ... Happy birthday, Nicolas and Happy Anniversary with love to you both, Nick and Rachel!

A few more pictures of Nathan and Nia ...

After quite a busy weekend in our lives, Monday rolled around pretty quickly. Our last Monday with Nathan and Nia ... only Thursday left, and then they go all the way home to San Antonio! We read three new books today and Nathan asked me if I had gotten them at the library. I asked him if he ever went to the library and he said that he did ... all the time! So we read "The Three Trees", "Bear Stays up for Christmas" and an nice children's nativity book. I wondered what else we could do today that would be new, fun and interesting ... and then I remembered my flannel graph Bible stories. I have only had opportunity to use them a few times with some of my 3's groups at church but there are SO many children there and it is difficult for me to interact with all of them at once!
Nathan Paul liked this way of telling a story very much. I only have the cutouts for a few stories and I figured we may as well start at ... well, the Beginning! So Nathan and I talked about God making everything we can see out of absolutely nothing. He liked putting all of the animals on the flannel board and insisted the kittens be put in the lake with the fish ...

... and the panda bear was placed up in the sky "where he could see everything" (to quote Nathan). We also did the Jonah story, but I think Nathan was disappointed I didn't have the Veggie Tale version. We did the birth of baby Jesus too.

Nia Madelynn seems to be cutting multiple teeth and I think felt a little out of sorts today. When she woke up from her nap, I scooped her a tiny bit of peppermint stick ice cream which she enjoyed very much. Nathan completely rejected the entire idea of ice cream!

Here is Nia responding to Grandpa Jones's request to "smile please" for the camera. She has a very pretty smile!

When we were down in Texas in October, we brought a playdough set for Nathan's 3rd birthday. While we visited at their apartment, Nathan didn't really seem too terribly interested in playing with the playdough and so it didn't occur to me to get our set out here at home for him to play with until this afternoon ... I figured we'd give it a try.

Mr. Nathan was VERY into playdough today, cutting it (notice the upside-down knife), shaping it, making doughnuts and cookie shapes ...

It was very fun to watch him have such a great time. When we color, it's usually me coloring with Nathan dictating what colors to use and just exactly how he wants the picture to look ... and he seems to really enjoy just watching and directing but definitely NOT coloring himself. With the playdough, however, he needed no help at all and really wanted to do everything himself.

The Queen was happy as long as we handed her the playdough toys so that she could pass inspection on them ... she didn't seem to realize she wasn't being given any playdough.

At one point this afternoon, Nathan gave me a huge bear hug and a very deliberate kiss on the cheek saying, "I give you hugs and kisses, granny!" I like that very much, Nathan! We had such a nice day with these kiddos! There is nothing quite like the JOY of grandchildren ... each one of them different ... each one of them so very precious.

2008 Festival of Lights

Christmas would hardly be Christmas around here without the annual Festival of Lights brought to our community each year by Calvary Church. Mr. Jones is a member of the choir and has performed in it for twenty years in a row! This year was a bit lighter on the music and heavy on the drama because this year Festival of Lights was "A Christmas Carol", written by none other than Charles Dickens, adapted as a play by Troy Lazarus.Our children have many memories of participation in the drama aspects of Festival, and at some point or other, all performed in it as either shepherds, or they were all dressed up in fashions of old for crowd scenes ... and wasn't Sabrina part of the Wise Men's entourage one year, complete with a jewel in the middle of her forehead?!

Yesterday I attended the afternoon performance and tried to get some good pictures; however, not many of them turned out ... something about shooting in the dark and all of those lights interfering with my focus, etc. However, I'll show you what I can! The Sunday matinee performance was totally sold out and I was without a ticket ... so I stood at the very back of the balcony and leaned against the railing, out of the way of everyone, and had a great view of the whole show!

The staging was really well done with a storefront and city street scene from Olde London, to Scrooge and Marley's place of business, Scrooge's bedroom ... and the storefront even opened up wide to allow for a dance floor and other interesting settings. There was lots of fog blown about on stage when the ghosts of Marley and the other spirits appeared, and there was even simulated snow falling, oh so gently ...

Here is the best shot I got of the orchestra warming up and playing their numbers during the pre-show.

And while the orchestra was playing, there was a live nativity on stage complete with the necessary shepherd boys, kings, stable, Mary, Joseph, and of course baby Jesus.

In the program literature this year, I read some interesting information about Charles Dickens that I did not know! He was a Christian and deliberately wrote elements of the gospel into his book. I grew up watching Hollywood's version of "A Christmas Carol" almost every Christmas Eve. My very favorite is the 1938 one with Gene Lockhart playing the part of Bob Cratchit. But even choosing the name "Cratchit" was intentional, as the word "cratch" is the old English word for "creche", the manger of baby Jesus!

The cast did a wonderful job of telling the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge, that very selfish and greedy man who experiences remorse, true repentance, and then miraculous forgiveness ... a journey true of all believers who have come to faith in Christ ~ and isn't that the real meaning of Christmas afterall?

My Mr. Jones dresses up rather nicely, don't you think?

Our grandson, Nathan, was able to attend at least one of the performances and was especially delighted that BOTH of his grandpas were taking part! Not only does Grandpa Jones sing in the choir, but his Grandpa McNeil plays the trumpet in the orchestra! I asked Nathan this morning if he saw Scrooge, and he responded with a wide smile and said, "Yes I did. I did see Scrooge. And I saw the shepherds. And the kings. And baby Jesus."