My Biggest Fans

Late last year, Steve said he felt like our family needed to make a trip to Wisconsin for Christmas. Although I had been with my parents and five siblings (who all live in Wisconsin and Minnesota) many times since I got married, it had been almost thirty years since I had been able to be with them at Christmas.

So we decided that it was time to go.

And as it turned out, it was more than time to go--it was also timely for us to go. Because Christmas 2008 was the last Christmas my dad would be us.

So we packed our bags and made the 2,500 hundred mile, round trip journey, creating a lot happy, snowy memories in the process.







Here I am at my parent's house, playing a game with my oldest brother Tim, and youngest sister, Debbie, and their families.




One evening during our visit, we went with Mom and Dad to one of their many nursing home concerts.




I did a couple songs with them, which was really special for me since they are the ones who gave me my love (and talent) for music. They encouraged me every step of the way as I became a guitar player, a piano player, a songwriter, and a singer. It is no exaggeration to say that they have always been my biggest fans.




And just to demonstrate that music is a great gift to pass down through the generations, Steve and I performed a song with Nathan.


At the end of the visit when we said our good byes, none of us knew that we wouldn't see Dad again.



But as much as I miss him, I know that Dad is healed, whole, and happy and that he's staying busy in heaven, telling all of his dramatic stories.


I also know that whether on earth or in heaven, he and mom will never stop being my biggest fans.

And I am blessed.

________________________

From the Comments Section

There were a couple questions/comments about how old I was when I got married.

Steve was twenty-four and I was just nineteen. In fact, when I got married, I was younger than Nathan is right now. Yikes!

___________________

Kathy asked if I had any family in Mount Holly, NC.

Kathy, Steve's parent's live in the Coulwood neighborhood, and his two brothers are both within fifteen minutes of Paw Creek church. None of them live specifically in Mount Holly, though.

A Paw Creek Wedding

Twenty-eight years ago this Saturday, Steve and I were married at Paw Creek Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, the church that Steve's family has attended for many years.





And in a nicely-timed turn of events, Paw Creek Presbyterian just happened to be where our family attended service yesterday.




We thought it would be nice to take a picture with the kids too, since they both sort of got their start at that church. (Um. Figuratively of course. Not literally.)




And to make the morning all the more meaningful, this fella also happened to be in town (and at church) at the same time we were. Kris was the soloist for our wedding.


Kris' family has lived next door to Steve's parents for over thirty-five years and have also attended the same church throughout those years. Kris and his charming wife live in Singapore so we don't get to see him very often.

And I thought I'd also include this picture of my hubby, although I'm not entirely sure what he's doing.



It was not only a special Sunday but also a memorable Christmas visit, made all the more lovely by this sight as we pulled away from Steve's parent's house yesterday to head home.

And just one more picture . . .

This is Nathan and his girlfriend Meagan at her college graduation two weeks ago. The reason I'm posting a picture of Meagan sort of "out of the blue" is that tomorrow, she will be coming to Manteo and staying until Sunday. Hooray!

From the Comments Section

Q. Have you read any books by Richard Paul Evans? --Krista

A. Unfortunately, I haven't but I'm always on the lookout for new authors. Thanks for the recommendation!

Q. Just curious....does Steve's church not have a Christmas day service? I think it's great that he and your family were able to travel for the holidays!!!! We're Catholic so Christmas eve and Christmas day are very important holidays. We celebrate with our pastor. I am not familiar with the Christian traditions. Merry Christmas!!!"

A. At our church, we had a candlelight communion service on Wednesday night and then yesterday (Sunday) our regular regular morning service was held, which our church's youth pastor preached at since Steve was out of town.

But no, we really don't have any tradition of having services right on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It sounds like a lovely thing to do, though!

Q. What did you get for Christmas? --Anonymous

A. I got a lovely pocketbook!

And thanks to all of you who shared some of your favorite Christmas gifts; it was so much fun to read about them all.

Old Movies. New Memories.

That was the cartoon that Steve's mom showed Nathan when he rolled out of bed (or actually rolled off the couch) yesterday morning at about 11 am. He thought it was pretty funny.

A few more scenes from Christmas Day . . .


Sarah setting the table with Grandpa Smith





Snowy set up camp right smack dab in the middle of the kitchen so as not to miss any little pieces of turkey or ham that were dropped.


When we went down to the rec room in the basement after Christmas lunch to open gifts, Snowy got the happy opportunity to lick out the bottoms of two cups of eggnog. (This is Steve's younger brother, Dana.)



Steve with his brother Jeff and their dad.


Steve asked for (and received) a tool belt. Here he is displaying just how very big the tool belt is.


Sarah figured she'd try it, too.


Since Ken is a retired Air Force fighter pilot, he got a big kick out of receiving an airplane made from recycled Coke cans.


After Christmas Dinner, gift opening and (most importantly--naps!) we took a trip down memory lane when Steve's dad broke out the ancient film projector and showed us movies of when Steve was young. The film footage moved from Norway to Denmark to England to New Mexico to Pennsylvania to North Carolina. Nathan and Sarah were quite fascinated to see their Dad (and their grandparents) in their younger years.





Snowy and I--full of good food and contentment.


____________________________

From the Comment section:

Georganna asked what we all got for Christmas.

Nathan's main gift was a set of ski poles from his grandparents, Sarah got a couple video games she was really wanting, as well as a few things from Aeropostale. I gave Steve the complete set of Sherlock Holmes episodes on DVD (he LOVES Sherlock Holmes) and he gave me a Miche purse and a couple shells. (You change the outside color/design of the purse by attaching different "shells.")

Would anyone like to share your favorite Christmas gift in the comments section? We'd love to hear about it!

Redeemed1 asked if that is our old furniture in the new house.

Yes it is! The only thing we had to buy new were the drapes for the living room. It took some creativity to make everything fit with the pillars in the room, but we are quite happy with the way it turned out.

Not having to buy new furniture is a wonderful thing, indeed!

A Mistletoe Season Missive of a Money Monkey Missile from Manteo

Since I figured that everyone else would be blogging about Christmas and mistletoe-related topics today, I thought I’d better follow suit and somehow incorporate mistletoe into my writing as well. Hence, the word “mistletoe” in the title of the blog. Which has nothing to do with blog itself. (Just thought I’d make that nice and clear.)

So here’s the non-mistletoe related story . . .

A few weeks ago, Steve and Sarah were rummaging around in the Manteo Ace Hardware store when they came upon a little stuffed monkey toy being “demonstrated.” (A “live video” demonstration by Nathan can be found further down the page.)

Steve and Sarah were immediately hooked on the plucky little fella and thought that the Money Monkey would make a great Christmas present for The College Dude.

Well, actually, just to make myself clear--when they bought the Money Monkey it was not yet technically, a Money Monkey. It was technically a Money-less Monkey.

However. When I was wrapping Sir Money-less Monkey, it suddenly occurred to me that we had spent fifteen dollars less on Nathan than our Initial Parental Budgetary Plan had allowed for. And so I decided to turn the Plain Ol’ Monkey into . . . wait for it . . .a Money Monkey. (I know. I know. My creative naming skills are unsurpassed.)

In order to transform the Money-less Monkey into the Money Monkey, I tucked five dollars into several places uponst the Money Monkey’s person.

I then set myself to wrap the monkey in the most tacky fashion possible. I think I succeeded.

Here is a picture of Nathan meeting the Money Monkey for the first time. Aren’t they so cute together?

And now, as promised, I present to you the live demonstration of what the Money Monkey from Manteo does when it is being used in the missile-esque way it was intended. Life doesn’t get much more entertaining than this. (I'm not sure why the video is sidewise but you still get the general idea of the Manteo Money Monkey's massively entertaining capabilities. And in case you can't see real clearly what's going on, the monkey "slingshots" across the deck emitting loud, moneky-esque cries.)

Miscellaneous Photos of Miscellaneous Smith Miscellany

Here are few more pictures from our evening of Pancake Making and Tree Decorating.

In this picture, I was asking Nathan to please just do a "regular expression." You can see how well he listens to his mother. Sigh. I may need to think about returning him for a refund.






Our new kitchen finally feels like home, now that we've cooked our Christmas Pancake Dinner in it.




In case you're wondering, yes we were baking sugar cookies and cooking pancakes at the same time. Part of our tradition is to have sugar cookies and egg nog during the decorating of the tree and we hadn't gotten around to doing the cookies earlier in the day. So had a big ol', happy cooking mess!





Each year when we make the pancakes, the kids always (wistfully) ask if we might have any chocolate chips in the house. And each year I (regretfully) say that we don't. Until this year! We actually had chocolate chips! In the house! Hooray!






One of our church members gave us this ornament. (OBX stands for the Outer Banks, which is the string of barrier islands close to where we live.)



And speaking of ornaments, we asked Nathan to write on the bottom of the ornament he brought home from Jerusalem saying what year he bought it. (And do not even ask me why he's wearing shorts and a t-shirt in December. I think we've had this conversation before.)


A few views of the Smith Tree







Steve speaking at the candlelight communion service last night.



After the service, we came home and opened gifts. Steve always reads the Christmas story before the opening of the gifts commences.


One of the gifts which Nathan opened. There will be more written about this little fella--nicknamed the Money Monkey--in the next couple of days.


And now it's time to pack some stuff and hit the road for Charlotte! I haven't packed a suitcase in two whole weeks, after having packed one every week for several months.

I hope I haven't forgotten how. (Yeah, right.)

Nathan and Tree Decorating

We had a great night cooking and decorating the tree last evening. It was so special having Nathan back among us. You can tell that he has gotten a lot more serious and mature since the last time we saw him.



The Smith Men were helped by the Smith Doggie in their cooking tasks. (Although I can assure you that Snowy's interest was not altogether altruistic!)

I'll have more picture to post later but here is my favorite one of the night.

We're leaving the house in a few moments for our candlelight communion service, then we'll come back home and open our gifts. Tomorrow morning we'll head out for the 6-7 hour trip to Charlotte and come home late Sunday evening.

More later . . .