Yesterday morning we woke up to see 12 degrees as the temperature projected on our ceiling by a handy-dandy clock we were given for our wedding.  This morning, it was 15 degrees.  It has yet to snow enough to stick, but you couldn’t tell it looking out the window: even by mid-afternoon, many of the roofs I can see are still white with frost.  We’d like some snow for insulation for the plants.  But we’re thankful for the insulation our cozy warm house provides against the weather!  And I’m also glad for this “dry cold” instead of the “wet cold” I grew up with: it’s the only thing that’s kept me from becoming a permanent ice cube here!  Now I go back to where I grew up and 50 degrees feels as cold as 20 here.  At least almost!

I was feeling rather sacrilegious as Merritt and I discussed our plans to not put up any Christmas decorations.  With all the dust that his sanding of the sheetrock will be generating, I was not real eager to get out all our decorations just for them to collect dust.  And we knew there would be plenty of tree and light style décor at the grandparents’ houses.  But Merritt decided we needed something up (other than the decorative Christmas towel my grandmother just sent) to spread holiday cheer.

Yesterday morning Merritt and Ruth emptied the top of one of our bookshelves set up our nativity scene.  Aunt Marcy gave us the set for our first Christmas, and Merritt got me some more of the pieces that next Christmas.  Ruth had so much fun last year helping set it out—but this year was even better.  She had a little trouble remembering the difference between Joseph and the shepherd, but she managed to learn all the names of the figures!  And of course, she let little sister touch the figure of Mary—but our Mary Kate wasn’t really that impressed.

I added our Christmas photo frames to the shelf: the “Winter Wonderland” frame with a photo of me as a little girl, playing in the snow (looking an awful lot like another little somebody who runs around this house!), the photo card of Ruth on Santa’s lap her very first Christmas (they’re sitting on a tractor, but it’s a red one, because we don’t have a local John Deere dealer!), and the green frame with reindeer dancing around its edges with the photo of Merritt and I on our first Thanksgiving together.

It’s just one little corner of our home, but it helps it feel a bit more like Christmas.  I miss my twinkling lights, though.  I might have to ask Merritt what he thinks about putting some twinkle lights up somewhere.  Our plans to put hooks around our eaves for lights outside keep getting pushed one year further along with our plans to paint the outside of the house.  But it hardly feels Christmasy without twinkle lights.

At least we have Christmas music playing nearly 24-7!  Between the local station that tunes into the North Pole between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and our collection of Christmas CD’s that Merritt got out of the shed, we have every variety of Christmas music playing on my under-the-cupboard radio in the kitchen (plus Lanier’s beautiful pieces playing here on the computer in my Windows Media Player).  Oh yes, and books: our Christmas books are in the box with our Christmas music.  Merritt already read a Little Golden Book about the animals on Christmas to Ruth last night.  And he has plans to start reading Gene Edwards’ The Birth as soon as we finish Robinson Crusoe—or maybe sooner if I convince him we won’t get both read before Christmas!

Tonight we plan to wrap gifts.  Our shopping—what we did—is done.  And I have a few little packages to mail off Monday.  Maybe then it will feel like Christmas is indeed coming.  Despite all these preparations, I find myself very much identifying with my friend Chantel in feeling “behind the time”.  It can’t possibly be just three weeks until Christmas.  Not without snow on the ground!

Christmas cookies.  Maybe that’s it.  I need to bake some fattening Christmas cookies.  I bet that will do the trick.  I had planned to make an apple crisp cheesecake tomorrow.  But maybe I’ll add Christmas cookies to the list.  Ruth would like that, being the expert cookie baker that she is.  And her daddy (aka The Cookie Monster) would be thrilled.  The trick is to bake some I’m not really fond of.  That takes ginger cookies and peppermint candy cane cookies off the list immediately.  I guess I’ll have to try my hand at a recipe I don’t like.  Hard to taste test in that kind of baking, though!

What kind of Christmas cookie is your favorite?  Do share the recipe.  Maybe, just maybe, I won’t like it as much as I adore Betty Crocker’s GinGins.