Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Well, I'll say this for myself...I'm consistently inconsistent, ha!  November has been an interesting month with my husband taking a lot of time off for hunting, chopping his vacation days all up.  When he wasn't out at the farm where he hunted, he was here at home and throwing my usual routine all out of whack.  Or when he was home he'd want to go off and do something...which also threw my routine off track.  I can't write if there are distractions around, and I usually do any of the writing I do early in the morning.  So.  No blog time.  I got a message on my Facebook timeline from my cousin yesterday asking where my blog had gone to, that she checks every day and nothing is there.  Ouch.  Time to get back in the saddle, so to speak.

My two grandsons are going to have a pretty interesting experience this week.  They're flying out to Portland, Oregon, which is where we're from originally, for basically the first time since we moved to Michigan almost 7 years ago.  The company their parents work for is having its annual Christmas dinner there, where the home office is.  The younger one had gone to Oregon once before but he was quite tiny and I don't think he remembers much about it.  This time they'll be 9 and 11 when they go so I'm sure a lot of it will stick with them as far as memories go.  When I was a little girl, driving 35 miles to Olympia, Washington, from my small home town felt like traveling to Mars.  Now it's nothing for my grandsons to fly to the West Coast 2400 miles away, or fly to Florida for vacation.  It was 7 years ago right around Thanksgiving time we found out we'd be moving to Michigan and at 57 years of age I had never dreamed anything like that would happen at this stage in life.  But here we are...travel is just a routine part of life.  If it's advanced this much in my lifetime, the mobility we now have, the families spread all over the world...what will it be like when my grandsons are my age?  Maybe the Jetsons' flying cars will be a real and common thing.

Our daughter moved with us to Michigan and lived here a little over 5 years but decided she missed Oregon too much and moved back a year and a half ago.  When we went out to lunch together and she broke the news to me I was very supportive of her decision...every mother wants their kids to be happy...but I wasn't too sure how the separation was going to work out.  Both of our children had always lived in the same area we did.  But I have to say with technology the way it is today it's been painless and seamless.  We probably keep in better contact now than we did when she lived 10 minutes away.  When she lived here she worked long hours and we rarely were able to get together.  Now we text, we talk on the phone, we do video chats.  She's gone...but she's not.  I have a true love/hate relationship with technology, but when it's working it's wonderful.  The only downside I see is how addicting it is, to check Facebook multiple times a day or pick up our phones when we're bored.  My husband cracks me up with his Facebook account.  He checks it in the morning if he has time and as he sits there and scrolls through all the political junk and false news on there he'll sigh and say, "I don't know why I waste my time on here."  I know.  I go through the same feelings.

Do any of you still send out Christmas cards?  We send out a lot and I just bought mine yesterday.  I know most people do it electronically with greetings on Facebook and Twitter, which is fine...don't get me wrong.  Being greeted any time of the year is nice!  But don't you just love to go to the mailbox and find a bunch of cards at Christmas filling it up?

I usually wait until the first week or so in December to put up our Christmas tree but this year I did it Thanksgiving morning while we waited to leave for dinner at our son's house.  I think my husband was shocked but I told him we need something beautiful, something hopeful, something that brings us some joy.  With so much...junk...going on.  With violence taking over.  With evil waxing worse and worse...

I dunno.

I need a break.

And there's just something about the lights at night, candles around the room flickering.

It gives me a little peace.

Comfort.

And joy.