Luke & Krista are Home!

Michael and I are back at the airport for another midnight pickup. This time we are picking up Krista and Luke (KrUke). They have spent the past week in CA with Luke's children and are now here for a week of glorious family time and fun. Luke is flying from CA to MT and then to AK. Krista is flying from CA to Denver and on to AK. We are figuring out these late pickups...we wandered down to the COMFORTABLE chairs. (Note: we realized later we can avail ourselves of the military lounge in the future).

Both landed within minutes of each other. We picked up luggage and headed home to the valley.

Much earlier in the day I had enjoyed breakfast with the girls at Sophia's. Our family gift exchange is NYE and our household exchange is after that...so we went shopping and enjoyed the clearance deals. LOL

We wrapped gifts this afternoon....and it looks much more like Christmas under the tree.  These are our gifts for the kids and grands. We also draw names so there are more gifts to come from others before NYE.

During our Christmas Eve services Pastor Brian talked about the real nativity scene ala Revelation....we added a red dragon to our set. It symbolizes the fact that from the moment Jesus was born a battle rages...and sometimes life just stinks when we are caught up in the battle. 

This speaks to me. The past few years have been hard as we bumped into evil and it impacted us in big ways. That first Christmas I pushed through and decorated the tree, and it was hard and depressing. Our ornaments are photo and we missed Josiah so much.  By last Christmas I had learned it was OK to allow grief space, all the old things don't have to be done to prove we CAN do them and so we didn't put a tree up at all. We put up the nativity. 

This year the tree is up - with lots of lights but no ornaments. Maybe I'll pull the ornaments out next year. Maybe not...but that dragon makes sense to us.