Tea for Two

Jonathan and I spent quite a bit of time during the rest of his Christmas vacation riding our bikes. We rode around the bike trails in our town. On New Year's Day, we started out with a delicious breakfast and then took our bikes to ride around in Austin. I enjoy the view of the city from across the river. At the end of our ride, we found a few murals and had to take pictures with the Winnie the Pooh one. We love the mild winter weather that enables us to ride all year long!

We're finally to Christmas! We had a nice and quiet Christmas Eve with a yummy cheese board and more Christmas movies. In the morning, we opened presents and ate delicious homemade breakfast tacos. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas too!

 I almost never know what I want for gifts. It makes things difficult for Jonathan, but a few days before Christmas I realized that I really wanted a bike. I did some research and found the one I wanted and we picked it up a couple of days before Christmas. We rode to the library and found that they had a library bike! Riding a bike makes me feel free like I did when I was a kid. I may not go as fast as I did back then, but I still enjoy it!

I didn't realize so much happened in December 2019! I'm glad that I'm taking the time to go through it and remember now. In the lead up to Christmas, we attended church for our Christmas service. After we got home, we opened a couple of Christmas presents early. I don't feel any guilt about it because they were both food. First up was a pound of one of our favorite See's Candies. The other was an entire jar of my absolute favorite hot salsa from a family owned restaurant back in California. I'm still working on finding a Texas alternative, but until that happens luckily I have family willing to send it to me. I don't know who was more excited about these gifts, but they were delicious!  

Jonathan and I hardly ever go to the movies. Neither one of us pays much attention to what's coming out, so we just don't think about it. Jonathan saw that a new WWII movie was coming out and he wanted to see it. Lucky for Jonathan, that is one of my favorite genres of movies and so we went and saw Midway. I was more excited about it because I don't know much about the Pacific theater of the war and wanted to know more. I really enjoyed the movie and Jonathan was happy with the accuracy of it. The only problem he really had with it was when the plane wings would touch the water. If that happened in real life, the planes would crash into the water. Besides that, it was a very realistic war movie and I plan on watching it again.

Back when we still lived in Utah, my mom sent me the letters for the Christmas song that is in the Charlie Brown movie. I did my best with sticking it to the wall, but it wasn't perfectly level. Well in 2019, we broke out the laser level that we got from my grandpa and it made the process so much easier! Of course, I don't have a picture of the whole saying, but this is the best one I have!

We found another new Christmas tradition in 2019. The First Baptist Church of Burnet has an interactive nativity of downtown Bethlehem. We drove out there early and stumbled on a Christmas activity in the town square. I don't know where it came from, but they had snow that kids were playing in. They were also raffling off bikes for kids of various sizes. The line was reminiscent of the various lines at Disneyland, but it moved rather quickly. Once we were inside, it really felt like we were transported to a different time. There were Romans, tax collectors, people baking bread, others were weaving baskets. It was very impressive. In the distance was the new star that marked the birth of Jesus Christ. We followed it and eventually found Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. It was a really cool experience and I hope that it comes back for this Christmas.

We started the month of December with our last trip to the San Antonio Temple for the year. Before we went inside, we took a family picture for our Christmas card. I love the beautiful stained glass windows there and wanted to have them in our picture. The way the light comes through the tree reminds me of the tree of life that Lehi saw in vision. After we finished an endowment session, we sat in the celestial room together. This is one of my favorite parts of spending time in the temple. I take time to ponder about my life and pray for direction from the Lord. It is such a peaceful place.

In the build up for Christmas 2019, I felt strongly that we needed to add more traditions that focus on Jesus. I had extra clay from a project I did years ago and finally knew what to use it for! We rolled it out to make Christmas ornaments and stamp some of the names of Jesus that are found in the scriptures. After they finished baking, I used a black sharpie so the names would stand out. I plan on adding more each time we find more of His names as we study the scriptures.

 I looked at my last post here and was shocked to see that it was all the way back to November 2019. A lot has changed both in our lives and in the world.  We finally used our cookie jar for cookies back in November 2019! One reason why I stepped away from blogging was because I was trying to figure out how social media fits into my life. I'm still trying to figure it out, so we'll see how much I use this old blog.  This is our family this past November. For now, I plan on going back and recording what has happened since my last post since this is kind of a family journal.