Escape Into No Man's Land.

The angel leads the way
dividing the darkness
with his light sword

Then a weary man walking, and
a donkey bearing a wife worrying,
holding gently her mortal baby boy

The very one who once lit stars
and commanded angels to sing.

Now he nods quietly in the darkness
as the angel leads them on
away from a sobbing Bethlehem


The picture is from Kevin Ryan's website.

An Angel, a Joseph, and a Mary

That's all who came to children's church today. Everybody was gone for Thanksgiving with one parent or another...or one grandparent or another.

Advent began with Wonderful Counselor, and one of the children dressed as a prophet to light the candle while the scripture was being read, so I talked the other two into dressing up in their Christmas program outfits so I could take their picture.

I love this time of the year--re-enactments and rememberings. We made clothespin dolls and dressed them with scraps of vividly colored felt--oddly enough--a Joseph, a Mary, and an angel, complete with a star-twined halo.

Early in the Morning

They are sleeping.
All over the house.
Beds are full...and so are all the couches.
I'm sitting quietly in the dark...in the den...typing as softly as I can.
Schnetka are in the oven...on warm...bubbling quietly.
I went to bed before ten...after calling my parents to make sure they made it safely home.
It's a thing with me.
I don't know how late they all stayed up, but I remember hearing the saxophone playing before I turned on the overhead fan/ambient noise and faded away.
Well, in my defense, I had been up since five, so I could put the turkey and ham into the oven hours before I needed to and make sure they almost burned. Fortunately, the only thing that burned was the pan of honey glazed carrots and, as I said at the time, if you are going to burn anything on Thanksgiving Day, it might as well be carrots.
Almost all the family was here--we were just missing seven--those North Carolina people and the Chicago five. So the twenty one of us played games and took pictures and just enjoyed the time together...not to mention all the pies and cheesecakes and chocolate and snickerdoodles.
It was lovely--the weather crisp and cool, the leaves crunchy.
Thanks, God, for such a peaceful time in our small pocket of the world.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Babysitting Brave Boys

Last week I got to do something special.

We have a banquet every year to promote the school and raise funds. It's great food, and a good speaker, and I usually host a table, but this year I kept the nursery--not just little babies, mind you, but toddlers and elementary aged children as well. There were supposed to be eleven youngsters, but we ended up with seven--six little boys and a girl. They came in like a freight train, and proceeded to derail--toppling all the nursery toys with them. All the quiet tracing and coloring activities I had planned to do had to wait for a lull in the energy level. Fortunately, I had a group of student helper/volunteers...one helper per child, if you count Turtle and me. It was great!

They ate pizza; (we got plates from the banquet room). They ignored the chocolate chip cookies and got excited about coloring a long mural with markers and pasting fall leaves all over a hastily drawn tree. We had to watch them every second, however. These two little angels in the first video were occupied with dishes and setting the table (man style). I turned my back on them to get something and they decided to make the slide more exciting by "jacking" it up on blocks. One of the students called me and I was in time to stop them from launching themselves over their newly elevated creation, but they were on the ladder already...who knows what would have ensued...and then again, they acted like they had done this before. Kids.