The Best Gift

Okay, so bear with my sappiness, if that's a word.

I'm sitting here at my desk listening to Christmas music, while it's freezing outside. There was ice on my car and ice on our trash can this morning. It will be 28 tonight. Winter is here. Christmas is here. And Baby Kelley is almost here.

Jonathan and Lauren are some of our favorite people. Jonathan is the student minister at Calvary, and we spend more time with each other than we do our wives, it seems. He's probably my best friend in the city, and I'm glad to have spent my first year working with him.

Their son, Spencer Vinsant, should arrive sometime today. Jenny and I are so excited to see how this changes their lives. I guess it's something you're more excited about after having a son yourself. If I didn't have a million things to do to prepare for the events of the coming weekend, I'd be at Baptist in the waiting room all day today. We cannot wait to meet him.

In the meantime, here are the lyrics to one of my favorite Holiday songs. And I'm pretty sure it's a favorite of my mom's as well. Enjoy.

"The Best Gift"

The best gift that I ever got
Didn't really weigh a lot.
It didn't have a ribbon 'round,
And it sometimes made a terrible sound.

The best of all it seems to me
It wasn't b'neath a Christmas tree.
And yet, I guess I'd have to say
That it made all the other presents twice as gay.

The best gift that I've ever known
I'd always wanted most to own.
Yet in my dreams of sugar and spice
I never thought it could be so nice.

The best gift that I'll ever get
Was sometimes dry and sometimes wet;
Was usually pink, but often times red
As it lay so innocently in its bed.

The best gift of the year to me,
The one I hold most dear to me...
The gift that simply drove me wild
Was a tiny, newborn child.

- Barbara Streisand

Settling for something better...

Okay, so let me just own up to it. We're not going to the Dallas Symphony this year, and I'm a little sad by that. Jenny and I have attended Christmas Celebration 5 out of the last 6 Christmases that we have been together, and we've always enjoyed making a weekend of it...shopping, eating, and just enjoying the hustle and bustle of mid-December in Dallas. 

One of my favorite parts of the concert every year is the performace of Still, Still, Still, an Austrian carol that I can only describe as the perfect holiday lullaby. So each year I listen to various arrangements and performances of this particular piece to get me ready. If you've never heard it, download it on iTunes. The UCLA Madrigal performance on "Hark, How the Bells" is particularly nice. 

This afternoon, as I attempted to rock Benjamin to sleep after a nearly four-hour battle, I popped in Still as a last-ditch effort. As I watched his face go from exhausted frustration to complete peace, and I felt his body relax as he fell asleep, I've experienced the peace which that song brings in the most perfect way. 

And with regards to missing Christmas Celebration 2008, I feel that I've found a suitable alternative. 

The Perfect Tree

Well, thankfully, we are back at home, and both feeling a lot better. 

I don't know whether or not Jenny gave me what she had, or if I contracted another mutant strain of something. I felt terrible all day Friday, and ached from head to toe. Not a good week for the Bunch Fam. 

But we're home, Arkansas won (though we had to hear it over the radio as we traveled back to LR last night...), and we're unpacked and ready for Sunday. 

Since we didn't have a real Thanksgiving meal, Jenny's parents brought us a full spread today, and cooked a turkey for us while we all went out and searched for trees. 

For the past few years, we have found Mary's Nursery in Bryant to be the best selection of trees. Ours last year came from there, and was perfect. 

So this afternoon, Jenny, Ben, Lary, Debbie, Holly and I piled into our vehicle and headed off. Jenny's mom picked a perfect tree for their living room, but Jenny and I couldn't decide on one for our house. While we were there, we managed to get some pics of Ben at his first tree lot. 

After we got their tree back to our house and into Lary's truck, we had our abbreviated version of Thanksgiving dinner...two days late. Once dinner was over and cleaned up, Jenny and I headed down to a different lot and found the 2008 Bunch Family Christmas Tree. Our house is a wreck, and we're both still wiped-out, but it's in its standing and fits the space perfectly. We'll post more pics once it's decorated. 

Enjoy the last day of Thanksgiving weekend. 

Thanksgiving...?

So I thought Ben's first Thanksgiving would be spent with us at my favorite Aunt Kay's, surrounded by cousins and aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

Instead, Ben is at Aunt Kay's with my parents and all of our extended family, and I'm sitting alone in my parents' den. Jenny woke up at 11 last night with the stomach flu. After a 3 AM trip to Walgreen's for phenergan, a 3:30 to 4:30 AM marathon cry session from Ben, who only wanted his mommy, I'm wiped.

Jenny is drugged-out in my parents' bed. Not the memorable Baby's 1st Thanksgiving we were hoping for. Guess I'll help put my parents' trees up later today after I warm up my take-out tray from Aunt Kay's...can you tell I'm feeling sorry for myself right about now?????

At least I'm not in the overly-dedicated group of golfer schmucks who pass along the cart path every few minutes. Who plays golf on Thanksgiving?

But, even in my current state of self-pity, I am most relieved and indeed thankful that they caught the madman who attacked Anne Pressly. A job well done to our local law enforcement officials. We'll all sleep a little easier tonight. 

Thankful...

Who could ask for anything more?

Happy Thanksgiving.

A Must Read

If you've been in our home then you've probably noticed that I read John Grisham books. In fact, I've read all of them. Several times. I enjoy reading for reading's sake, and that was hard to do while in seminary. I enjoy novels that I can breeze through in a couple of days, ones that don't wear on my intellect.

To those of you who have read Augustine or Aquinas, maybe your brains also enjoy an occasional respite. 

Whatever your reading tendencies may be, I have to recommend Grisham's "Skipping Christmas." I'll try not to get on my soap box about the box-office flop "Christmas with the Kranks"...I've never seen it, and just the title change alone is enough for me to know that it bears little resemblance to the novel. 

But in my opinion, the novel is a must read. In fact, we read it every year. I'll spare you my personal synopsis and just tell you to read it for yourself. You'll be glad you did. 

Top Ten Signs It's Baby's First Christmas

10. You use caribeners to hook four baby gates together to make a fence around the Christmas tree

9. Your Christmas tree looks like its lower half has insufficient limb capactiy, thus rendering it ornament-non-compliant 

8. All furniture surfaces topped with Department 56 Villages have been bolted to the wall for extra stability. 

7. All of the items in #8 have been reinforced with duct tape 

6. The Stockings are hung by the ceiling with care...because if they were hanging from the mantle he'd use them to pull himself up. 

5. Last year's classic outlining of the house in C9 White Lights has turned to: lights on the roof, on the porch posts, on the mailbox, santa's rear-end sticking out of your chimney, and the addition of at least two inflatables. 

4. "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" is on continual repeat in your car

3. You've purchased at least six outfits for the four Sundays of Advent at your church

2. You've been questioned since birth, although indirectly, as to which Grandparents get to wake up with him Christmas morning

1. Weekends with the grandparents so mommy and daddy can sleep in is "The Gift that Keeps on Giving the Whole Year." Clark.