Fun Stairs

Short, Fat, and Proud of That...

Pooh-bear:  making pudgy cute for almost a hundred years.

Snow, snow, snow, snow, snooooooooooow!

Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.
~Bill Morgan, Jr.

 I don't have the greatest view from my balcony, but even a parking lot looks pretty in the snow :)

Trees and beauty.  Beauty and trees.  I love the lamplight in this one -- just not the cars, so much.

Trying to capture the snow falling -- but I also liked how the drain pipe is full of snow :)

My bundles of wood, ready and waiting.  I'm going to save them for the evening hours, just in case I lose power and need some heat as well as ambience.

Mississippi-less-ly?

Got my first spray tan last night.  It was hilarious and, thankfully, not like the episode of Friends when Ross goes in for his spray-on tan.  Thankfully, mine was not a spray booth; mine was actually applied by airbrush by a lovely woman named Michelle at Island Tan in Columbia, SC.  I highly recommend Michelle, as she takes away any question of whether or not to count "Mississippi-less-ly" or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD2N2eqCjC0

Careful of the Icy Patch

The fact that someone on youtube made a montage of "the icy patch" clips from Muppet Family Christmas absolutely MADE MY DAY :)

Here's to family, old movie memories, and being careful of The Icy Patch!

Epic.

Happiness Is...

I'm putzing around my cozy little apartment, talking to my sister A most of the morning, unpacking Christmas decorations, cleaning the kitchen ... and this song popped into my head!  I couldn't honestly even remember what it was from or where I'd heard it, so I googled (I'm in love with google) and it's from the play You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown!  The neat and nostalgic thing about THAT discovery is that my college theater group put on that show my junior year and they did an AMAZING job.  It brought back a lot of memories, which made an already good day even better :)

It Was Not a Silent Night

This morning, a colleague of mine was in charge of chapel, and one of the songs he played was this one -- "Labor of Love," by Andrew Peterson.  The holiday season hasn't really begun, and already I can feel myself getting busier and busier, focusing on things and dates and deadlines and prices instead of quieting my heart and focusing on being thankful for what Christmas allows me to remember about my Savior...


There are a thousand Christmas songs, but this one touched my heart this morning.  I am attaching the youtube video, as well as the lyrics, so that you can hear the beautiful vocal talent of Jill Phillips, but I'm not a huge fan of the actual images in the video -- I don't know that they coalesce the way I'd like them to with the lyrics.  I suggest playing the video so you can HEAR, but I would read the lyrics while listening, rather than watching the video.  Enjoy the vulnerability and beauty of this song.

"Labor of Love" 
-- written by Andrew Peterson, sung by Jill Phillips

It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David's town

And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother's hand to hold

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David's town
In the middle of the night

So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love

"Like a Wink and a Smile"

When I was eighteen, my very littlest sister and I were best friends. We'd take long walks around the neighborhood together, and I'd ask her not to forget me when I went away to college. She was eight and would promise me with total sincerity that she'd never, ever forget me. And she didn't. All through my first year of college, my little sister would draw me pictures and send me letters covered with stickers and drawings of girls in pretty dresses. When I came home for Christmas, I slept on the floor of her room and we'd whisper secrets to each other.


"Our" song was Harry Connick Jr's "Wink and A Smile" -- we'd sing it to each other and try to figure out which one of us was the Wink and which one was the Smile... Every time I hear this song, I think of that sweet, smiling, little-girl-faced sister who captured my heart so many years ago; baby B was my little soulmate.


This past Saturday, a tall, strong Pennsylvanian boy asked my baby sister B to be HIS soulmate.


She said yes.

Congratulations to my beloved sister and her new reason to smile :)

... and the world must know how wonderful, how wonderful you are!

My sisters and I sing snippets of our childhood to each other.  Yes, we sing.  Randomly, and without regard for where we are, if we see something that reminds us of our childhood -- BAM.  The singing dorkiness erupts and the laughter follows. 

This morning, while wishing my sister A a fabulous happy birthday, I was reminded of this song.  (Probably because I was singing it to her.)  

Happy Birthday, A.  Share your glory.   

Sisters, Sisters

Yesterday, life threw a little Crazy at me.  I think that's at least one of the reasons God gave me sisters.  Because sometimes, you need someone who knows you, loves you, and can do things for you when you just can't...like deleting the Crazy from your electronic world.  I love you, A.  So very much.  Thank you for keeping me grounded in the reality of His sovereignty, even when life gets a little, well, Cuh. Razy.

   

My Love Affair with Nat...

If I was told I could only listen to one artist for the rest of my life, it would take me approximately .09 seconds to ask for Nat.  When I was a little girl, my sisters and I would listen to his Christmas album in our basement in the middle of July. Even if it was 95 degrees outside and we wore bathing suits and sunburns, hearing one song from that album would inspire us to tell my mom the basement "smelled" like Christmas.  In college, Nat King Cole introduced me to an era of music that felt immediately like home to my old soul.  Here is Johnny Mercer's "Autumn Leaves," sung by (if the link on the title will work) the velvet genius of the one and only Nat King Cole.  It is, in my opinion, the perfect synthesis of emotion, lyric and melody.

Autumn Leaves

Lyrics by Johnny Mercer, Music by Joseph Kosma

The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold

Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I'll hear old winter's song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall