Two Weeks

Yes, it's two weeks until Christmas and I was just pondering how frazzled I was last year. This past Monday we returned from a 12 day 3000 mile road trip to the cold north visiting relatives, attending a conference (not me) and general relaxing taking extra days to get to our destinations. 

As a result, I have no Christmas decorations up because I've been swamped at work. Do I care? Not particularly, but I hope no one at work cares because there are none up there either!

The first thing I did when returning was check my multitude of pumpkins scattered around the house for rotting bottoms.

I'm not ready for fall to be over. We left at it's peak and I was sure it would be gone when I got back but NO! It was still here just barely past it's glory. I drove around Monday and listened to the leaves blow across the sidewalks and watch some fall from the bradford pears. Glorious! I was in heaven for a day and I sure need that.

This was just confirmation that I need my quiet photo shooting trips for meditation. It amazes me how God can speak when you get away from everything, or should I say how much better we can 'hear'?

There were a lot of things that went wrong on this trip. 

• We encountered a rock chip in the windshield on the way out of town that actually cracked about a foot right through 'my' line of vision in the drivers seat. 
• We both ended up with physical ailments. (I nearly went to the hospital and I never do that.) 
• My credit card was compromised. 
• We got snowed in at Dad's two extra days preventing us from seeing my brother and sis-in-law. 
• We saw two really bad car wrecks, one of which we witnessed.

I counted up eight, but I'll spare you the rest.

• There were definitely some good too.
• Getting a lot of Christmas shopping done at the Mall of America and some shopping for myself. 
• Seeing that glorious snow and getting some shots of it. 
• Drive by shooting of tons of barns. I swear there was a barn every mile as we drove through Minnesota.
• Seeing a niece I hadn't seen in 6 years. 
• Watching my nephew's daughter play basketball.
• Finding the folks still in good health.

Well Christmas will just have to wait until I'm ready for it this year. Hallie did pile the ornaments on the tree before Thanksgiving because I promised her she could. (As in several on one branch.) Will I rearrange them? Probably not and that's a big step for the decorator in me.


At Dad's house.
I think they should have used this for their Christmas card by they always do a photo of themselves. Speaking of cards, mine are not done. I started looking through my Lightroom Library last night for photos to use and ended up quite side tracked as you can imagine.

This may just Merry Christmas from me. Have a very blessed holiday season!