This comes from the scene in Elf where Buddy walks across the street and promptly gets run over by a New York taxi cab. It is easily my favorite funny bit in the movie. The music, the timing, is perfect.
Merry Christmas, and be sure to take your maple syrup with you to dinner tonight.
It’s Christmas time. There’s a chill in the air outside, but houses are warming up with the sights, smells, and tastes of the season. Christmas songs, candy, and cookies (my favorite) are tempting us at every corner. Around this time of year as a kid, Mom would make a a slew of cookies of varous shapes, sizes, and colors. But her iced sugar cookies were always the headliner.
I loved these cookies so much that a few years ago I began to make these because I lived in Los Angeles, and my folks lived in Atlanta. And I had to have those cookies for eating and sharing during the holidays. I had helped Mom make them a few times in my past and I think I picked up some tips from here on how to make the sugar cookie delights.
This year I knew I had to make them as part of my remembrance of Mom. As many of you know, she passed away on October 27 this year. So like in years past, I got out the index card box she gave to me years and years ago, and pulled out that famous sugar cookie recipe.
What struck me this year was the handwriting on that card. It wasn’t just words and letters to a recipe. Yes, it was all of those things, but even more, it was in Mom’s handwriting. For some reason, it struck me that Mom some years ago had scratched out dozens of recipes for me by hand. And I’m so glad she didn’t get the computer out to do this. There’s something about handwritten notes, recipes and letters that say more than the words they contain. They say that someone really took the time to say something to you.
I was thankful when Mom gave me the recipe box as a gift some years ago, but not as thankful as I should have been. She put her love into that gift. Every time I reached for that card to figure out how many eggs and how many tablespoons I needed, memories of Mom hit me like a ton bricks. Her handwriting, like everyone else’s, was unique. She put family history down on index cards for me. And now that she is gone, that little box of recipe cards is something I cherish. I know now that she must have been very excited about that gift. She wasn’t giving me anything that could be bought at Macy’s or ordered from Amazon. It was part of my family heritage.
This realization that handwritten notes are more impactful than their digital counterparts made me think about my fifth grade trip to Washington D.C. I had a chance on that trip to see the founding documents of our nation with my very own eyes. Those documents were written by hand. Those documents were amazing, and seeing the handwriting of the Founding Fathers was incredible.
This makes me think that I should do more handwritten notes, because it is becoming a lost art in a post-modern world where digital modes of communication dominate. Maybe I should write out my blogs and then scan them in? Who has time for that, right? But if we do take the time to use ink and paper, I believe we will think more about what we say and write, and ultimately communicate it better to the person we are connecting with.
Merry Christmas, and be sure to write a handwritten note on your greeting cards this week.
Steve and I are co-leading tomorrow at the LOV (Live Oak Vineyard church) and are pulling out a few of our favorite Advent season tunes. One of my personal favorites is “God With Us” by MercyMe, a cross-over tune that is good to use year round, but even better during advent.
We are closing the set with a tune by our buddy Terry Butler who co-wrote Glory To God with Brenton Brown. This one has become a traditional song for us at the LOV for Advent, too.
Set List:
Bless His Name – Sanchez
God With Us – MercyMe
Full Attention – Riddle
O Holy Night
Glory To God – T. Butler/B. Brown
This is the third week of Advent which is a preparation for Joy.
Prepare our hearts
and remove the sadness
that hinders us from feeling
the joy and hope
which his presence
will bestow.
It’s been a fall full of sad times and good times. I document my life through Tumblr, and below is my account activity since November 1st. Check out the details at http://t.scottkeller.org/.
I’ve grown up in a family that gets started on Christmas pretty early. No, never before Thanksgiving. That’s just wrong, in my opinion. But often the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving Dad and I would drag up the decorations out of the basement so we could get the proverbial Christmas party started. Mom usually did the heavy lifting, but Sheri and I usually helped, and I always loved how the house was transformed over the stretch of an afternoon and evening.
I was the early riser in the family growing up, and one of my favorite mornings each year was the first one after the tree was decorated. I’d turn on the Christmas lights and bask in the glow and dream about what the season might bring.
Today Melisa and I thought we might head out to do a little shopping and pick up a tree. We drove around to look at trees and prices, and then thought we might stop at Kohls to shop. After a drive around the parking lot, we had second thoughts. I am pretty certain that there were not any spots left in the huge lot to park the car. Melisa and I glanced at each other, and we both knew we had avoided the swirl of Black Friday so far, and we were not about to get sucked in.
So we headed off to a garden center here in Glendora to pick up our tree and garland for the 2011-2012 Holiday season. We learned last year that a 6 to 7 feet tree is wayyyy too large for our little house, and we now have a wonderful 5 to 6 feet Noble Fir standing in the window, waiting for trimming to ensue. It was a stress free day thanks to second thoughts and that fact that I didn’t have to trim 35 pounds of branches off our tree this year to get it to stand up in our living room. Live and learn.
The Huffington Post brings up a very important debate going on all over America right now with last-minute shoppers out picking up their Thanksgiving accoutrements. The debate is over cranberry sauce. More specifically it is about which is better: the homemade stuff, or that gelatinous canned stuff the slides out of the can and retains it’s shape like a pillar of finger jello.
I personally prefer the homemade stuff, but I’m not too proud to enjoy eating the stuff with the can ridges. Its’ all good to me.
Huffington Post: Canned Cranberry Sauce Refuses To Be Dislodged From Many Holiday Menus
It’s 5:42 a.m. here in California on a Saturday morning, and I’m sitting at the kitchen table blogging. Why? I can’t sleep. I woke up an hour ago, and I tried for an hour to get back to sleep and wake up. The reason I woke up in the first place was because of a couple of horrible dreams stacked back to back.
I’ve been reading up on grief and what people go through after the loss of a close family member, and dreams and nightmares are normal part of the grieving process for some people. This is what has been happening to me for the last three weeks. Even before Mom died, I have been a person who typically has anxiety dreams, not fun-filled good dreams. But since her passing, my dreams have been nightly and usually scary and/or weird.
I’ve been on a long blogging hiatus for all the wrong reasons lately. A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from my Dad that my Mom was back in the hospital and that the doctor’s were concerned that she may not live for much longer. As most of my friends and family know, my Mom passed on to be with the Lord about six days later. She was 60 years old.
My mom was diagnosed with cancer just seven months ago, and doctors gave her 12-18 months to live back then. Obviously it was shorter than that, although it may be the mercy of God that her suffering didn’t last for months and months. She now is in the very presence of God and worshiping at His throne.
This week has been nuts. I launched a huge project at work at 6 a.m. on Monday morning, and all while Melisa is out of town helping to put on the Vineyard National Worship Leaders’ Retreat for the Eastern USA. But I have had a blast have some time to spend with my 16-month old son, Caed. Or if you prefer to call him Caedmon, that’s his full name.
Being a father is amazing. No matter what my day is like, I come through the door and Caed runs to meet me. There’s nothing that compares with that.
Caed and I are both looking forward to Momma’s return tomorrow night. It has been amazing to have some special bonding time with Caed, but we sure miss Melisa. I can’t wait for her to get back.
I should be asleep by now. I’m tired. I hit the office at 7:30 this morning and I got home about 8:00 pm tonight. It was a long day. I’m at the end of a very long project at my job, and today was stressful, yet productive. I’m having trouble winding down, and I’ve made enough stupid comments on Facebook for the night, so I’m going back to the old-fashioned blog post to get my thoughts out of my head.
It’s not Gino’s East or anything, but it is some really great Chicago style pizza and atmosphere in the Fullerton/Placentia area. If you need a slice of heaven, head over to this place. It’s authentic. (Just don’t compare it to Gino’s….there’s only on place like that).
Furious (New Album from Jeremy Riddle) from Vineyard Resources on Vimeo.
This is going to be good. That’s all there is to say about that. If you are getting Vineyard Resource’s “Club Vineyard” series, you have already heard a couple of tracks from this highly anticipated release including the title track, Furious.
Furious has had an impact at our local church, and I’ve heard from other worship leaders that they are using this song as well as Your Are Good and One Thing Remains. Jeremy has gone to a whole new level in his last two albums, and I’m really excited about this record.
You can pre-order Jeremy’s record from Vineyard Music here.
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