First Christmas Post 2025

Hello sweet friends.  The season of Advent is upon us, and it's such a special time.  We hung our Moravian Star on Sunday, the first day of Advent.     

I wish our porch didn't have these white stains; I think they are old water stains caused by water draining from my planters.  I try to be more careful when I water now, but I need to find out how to get rid of the white spots, if possible.     We had an exciting Thanksgiving this year, but not the kind of excitement one would wish for.  The day before Thanksgiving, Hal and I were working outside; I was planting pansies in my pots on the porch, and Hal was making holes along the front of our Crape Myrtle trees.  He had a small auger attached to a drill that would drill down the right depth for planting bulbs.  We were finally going to plant some daffodil bulbs after living here for almost 30 years.  Hal had laid a string out so he would plant the bulbs in a mostly straight line down the yard, and the string got caught around the auger with his finger trapped beneath it.  He tried to reverse the drill to unwind the string, and instead it quickly tightened and snapped the top joint of his finger almost completely off.  He made an angry exclamation, and I asked if everything was okay.  He said, "No, I cut my finger off."  I couldn't believe it; my stomach just rolled over.  I ran to where he was working, dreading to see his finger on the ground, but it was still attached, barely.       I drove him to the urgent care clinic about five minutes from our house.  When the doctor saw his finger, he said we would have to go the ER because they were not equipped to handle that at the clinic -- it needed a plastic surgeon.  The doctor said, "I'll be honest -- the finger is basically amputated."  Thankfully, the emergency room is only about ten minutes from the clinic, so we drove right over and they were able to see him immediately.  The plastic surgeon cleaned the wound and reattached the end of his finger, and they gave him a shot for pain and some prescriptions.  They made an appointment for us with an Orthopedic Surgeon for the day after Thanksgiving, but the doctor said he didn't have a lot of hope that Hal would be able to keep the whole finger.  We saw the Orthopedic Surgeon on Friday, and he seemed pretty hopeful, as the skin was a healthy color.  An appointment was made for the surgery on Tuesday, December 2nd.  Afterward the surgery, the surgeon said he felt there is a 50/50 chance that the finger joint will rejuvenate.  There was a lot of damage on the inside that he couldn't see before the surgery.  We were disappointed, as this is his right hand, and Hal is right-handed; however, we will make the best of it.  People have some terrible accidents while working outside, and we're thankful it wasn't worse.      I was able to finish planting my pansies yesterday and Wednesday, so I took a few quick pics of the porch.          

   It rained last night, so the porch was still wet when I took these pictures.   

This is the wreath my mom and I made at her house back when my Dad was still living.     

I'm feeling good that I've got the porch done; now it's on to the inside of the house.  We purchased an artificial tree online because Hal is not allowed to lift anything with his right hand, and we couldn't have managed a real tree this year.  We'll probably go back to a real tree next year because we love them, but I told Hal it will be good to have the artificial tree for when we are decrepit someday. 😉     How are your Christmas preparations coming along? We've been looking at Christmas decorations and Christmas markets in Europe on YouTube.  It's all very pretty, although I find some of it way too gaudy and commercialized.  I've been thinking about how I love Christmas; I love being with family, but I also love celebrating the birth of the Christ child.  When you think about it, the Reason for the Season is with us always, every day.  Somehow, that's a very comforting thought.     Thank you for stopping by and reading.
Blessings,