Christmas of 2012 is over :(

Every year during Thanksgiving I would help my mother decorate the house in preparation for Christmas. Our house would be covered with many Christmas candles and other oddities found over the years. And, of course, we would always have our Christmas tree decorated with lights, candy canes, beautiful ornaments, and tinsel. However, my family is stubborn and sentimental about change sometimes. We have never used artificial Christmas trees and I doubt we ever will (even as we may move away to celebrate Christmas with our respective new families). We would always go out to buy and chop down the Christmas tree of our choice. One year we even used a tree from my Grandmother's yard, which happened to be my personal favorite due to my extreme sentimentality. In fact, Grandma's house is where we would almost always spend Christmas. She lives in a beautiful area off the water which you would have to see to believe. This year, because of everything that has happened, we were unable to go there for Christmas. Under normal circumstances, my family would also decorate my Grandmother's house for Christmas as well, but this year we had no need since our Christmas plans were drastically changed when Grandma fell. Also, during this very unusual year, I wasn't able to help with the decorations as I normally did.

The tree's just walkin' right outta there!

[Now we get to the exciting part!] Maybe I missed out on the decorating, but now I get to help take everything down and pack it all up again! My favorite part in all this is cleaning up the confetti, because it makes such a big difference in how our house looks. When I was younger I would look forward to trimming all the branches off the Christmas tree with a pair of shears, but as you can see, I'm not as destructive nowadays (I think).

So that's our current project; fixing up the house. However, we are very lax in our cleaning so I have ample time for other activities. For instance, two days ago I got to go skiing with Jesse and my dad. Even though we mainly remained on the bunny hills (beginner slopes) I had a wonderful time. My dad and I would usually go on the intermediate slopes, but Jesse refused because then he would have to actually zig-zag down the slope. Zig-zagging down the slope helps you regulate your speed so you don't keep getting faster and faster until you can't easily stop or slow down. Well, Jesse didn't practice that very useful skill because he wanted to go as fast as he could without slowing down. Therefore, going on the harder slopes was out of the question. He certainly had a need for speed :)

I also had the opportunity to read the book my mother recommended for me; Poetic Justice by Alicia Rasley. As I knew I would (since my mother and I have a very similar taste in books), I enjoyed it immensely. This book is a regency romance. One of the things I love about regency romances is that they rarely contain anything over-the-top that you might find in modern Harlequin romances. I've also read, earlier during my break, And the Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers. This book is Christian fiction, as all her books are. So far, however, none of the other Francine Rivers books have even compared with the Mark of the Lion trilogy she wrote. That trilogy is so well-written, containing so many real problems and troubles people struggle through, that I immediately denoted it as my ultimate favorite. It has my highest recommendation (but, of course, other people may not feel the same way as I do about it). Getting back to the book I actually read this break, it was primarily about dealing with hypocrisy and always sticking to God's Word for answers and comfort.