All the Season’s best to you and yours!

Christmas is simpler and quieter now that there are just the two old folks under this roof.  Bits of Christmases past come out to dangle and sparkle and add a little happy clutter for the month of ‘getting ready’…

And a few funky new things have joined the old and traditional…

 

No glamor here, but it’s homey, and we are grateful to have each other and to live near four out of seven grandkids.  Herein lies incentive to decorate and bake and wrap little packages. Oh! And to build ‘gingerbread’ houses…

  

I have enjoyed quiet mornings with Piper’s Indestructible Joy advent readings this year, highlighting the treasure that is ours in knowing Jesus.  May we see Him more and more clearly and love Him more and more dearly in this New Year.  This is my prayer for you and me both!

Blessings on you as you take time to consider the significance of that first Christmas morning.

Merry Christmsas from us and ours ( :

–LS

Thanks be to God for the indescribable gift of His grace to us in sending Jesus to be born into our world!

 

If it must be cold, let there be snow.

I’m really not a cold-weather girl, but if there must be winter, let it be lovely and let it be opportunity to move in ways you cannot do in summer… And so we have.  Saturday afternoons often find us on one trail or another working up a sweat as we have a look around cross-country ski territory here.

Here’s a jumle of the views we have enjoyed over the last month or so…

And of course, iconic Lake Louise, in winter:

 

Look closely and you can see an ice climber just below the frozen waterfalls below.  This is a popular spot for this brave sport!

These days we are having to drive to snow-country, an hour in either direction.  Our out-back is dry and bare.

But oh the ice is lovely!

Like icy jellyfish!

  

Will it be a snowy Christmas yet?  We shall see.

Here’s hoping you are finding beauty in the hard and cold seasons of your life. The Creator and Sustainer of all we see and know has been born to us a Saviour as well.

–LS

What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD.

Ps.116:12-13 ESV

A snowy tromp-about just for fun…

We had a happy tromp about at Bow Valley Provincial Park–perfect pastime for a Sunday afternoon…

The wind was fierce, the ice thick on Middle Lake, and the wild swans on the Bow River picturesque…

 

  

If we must have cold, let it also be picturesque!

This was also the week of our first official cross-country ski outing (not including the backyard warm-ups of last week!).  It was hard slogging up Morraine Lake Road in Lake Louise but the downhill return, with scenic stops to boot, made it all worthwhile!

And the new week dawned with a lovely sunrise…

His mercies are new every morning!

 –LS

God thundereth marvellously with his voice; great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend.
For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth; likewise to the small rain, and to the great rain of his strength.

Job 37:5-6 KJV