accountability partners and christmas decorations

Anyone reading will notice the . . . absence of posts. This is partially due to a lack of enthusiasm to blogging, but mostly due to the business of final exams and then the ecstasy of being done with finals and being on Christmas holiday from school. I would like to dig in my feet a bit deeper and really commit to keeping up with this.

In other "due to's":

Due to the sparse postings on the page at the time, I have decided that the only way to commit to a consistent schedule of blogging will be to have a blogging accountability partner. My brother, Tim, has graciously agreed to fill this position. So, for the next few weeks, we are going to try to form a more routine schedule of blogging together.

It's been really great having Tim home for the holidays, participating in all the traditions my family has developed over the years. The most important, and probably most fun of all, is decorating the Christmas tree with ornaments. There are so many stories that come out for each and every ornament; some of them funny, some of them heart - warming, some of them stupid inside jokes that never fail to send the whole family rolling on the floor.

I do have some favorites. One is an ornament in the form of a man on a bike, which must be placed on the tree whilst humming the theme from E.T. Another is the Millenium Falcon, which plugs into a light socket and then features lights itself. My mother has a number of Precious Moments ornaments that my father has given her: one for every Christmas they've been married. There are a number of woven candy canes, and the goal of their placement is to subtly remove all of them so as to be the one who places each and every one of them; kind of a fun game to play.

I absolutely had to wait for Tim to get home to do this with my family, he is a vital part of the humor of the traditions. I know that we won't celebrate every Christmas together as the years go on, but I'd like to enjoy as many as possible. Of course, this decorative delay meant that we couldn't decorate the tree until about a week before Christmas. By the time Christmas came and went, it seemed that it hadn't been around for hardly any time at all. I now believe, as a result, that the tree and Christmas decorations will remain up well into the New Year. I have no problem with this, I love Christmas!