Savoring

Sunday morning.

In a little bit I have to round up the family and troop off to church.

Mom called three times since Friday and left me an email. Part of me is annoyed at the frequency and the other part of me thinks it is sweet that she's worried about Julia's pinkeye (cleared up already.)

We took Julia to see Mom B. yesterday and Paul helped Whit go get a Christmas tree. It is HUGE. We also took her to see the Christmas parade over there and it was cute. A small town parade, it was about an hour and low key. Just the right size and length for Julia. At first she was clutchign on to Paul's shirt tightly and staring with huge eyse and her mouth open in an "O." Occassionally she's chew on a finger, which I haven't seen her do in a long time. I suppose the police sirens made her feel anxious.

After a while though, she got into it and by the time it was over she was a pro at waving and shouting "May Chris-miss!" at the flaots going by.

Friday before we left for school she found a lizerd on the front stoop and announced, "lizard, Mommy! Lizard!" At school I found one on a branch so I carefully picked up the branch and gave it to Julia to hold. Anole-on-a-stick. Of course, she tried to grab him and he scampered off.

I keep tellgin myself to savor moments like that because she's growing like a weed and in the blink of an eye, these first discoveries will be over.

She says "Flowers" now instead of "flafla." I miss the flafla's.

[...]

Today's sermon was about upcoming holidays, the need, feed, and greed of them, and the 30 Acre Footprint. Basically to carefully consider the impact of consumerism, esp. at holiday time when shopping frenzies abound. I'm probably not doing it jsutice, but it was very interesting and I came away from it considering a "technology fast."

The other stuff along a voluntary simplicity line I've already been doing all year but I hadn't yet arrived at doing a technology fast and abstaining from using high-tech stuff and seeing what I can and can't really do without.

We had lunch at Sweet Tomatoes and then went to drumming circle. That was fun. I'm glad Paul enjoyed it even though he's feeling sick.

Got calls from some ofthe in-laws -- MIL, FIL and then I called SIL.

MIL is trying to work out Christmas Eve and she said Christmas should not be such a PITA. I agreed, but privately was thinking that the one who is making it be a PITA is her. She's hung up on this opening presents thing.

FIL called just to say hello as he does most weekends.

I called SIL because she emailed me and I didn't feel like typing at the time so I just called her up to answer her.