Two Christmas Stories-The Liles Extravaganza, and 50 for No. 50

 

Everyone came to our house this year for Christmas. We had a houseful, and that’s the best part. AJ and Erin even brought their aging dog, Harper, so we had three dogs, one house cat that checked every box, and one cat that darted in every time the door was open to cuddle with Maya. One of our better Christmases. The results were two large leaf bags of trash after the attach on the packages, and being the recycler that I am, enough bows, gift bags, and tissue paper to last me till i die. Caroline’s gifts, at her request,  were donations to St. Jude’s, sponsoring animals at the Clovis Zoo, and a donation to Heifer International, bless her heart. Her husband Neil receive what he wanted-beef jerky and certain candies, and self-repairing targets for practice with a box of bullets. He is easy to buy for. Colten got lots of gift cards and the new XBox. AJ’s gifts were things that worked right in with his hunting-bullets, a meat-grinder/sausage-maker and the bullets and self repairing targets. Erin got gift cards and kitchen utensils as she loves to cook. Maya got her first IPhone, a real surprise, I think, and other things. Ben now has a gaming chair and a remote-controlled helicopter. Bill got two magazine subscriptions and clothes. He is the hardest one to buy for. I am the easiest to buy for; everything is fun for me. I got a new Painted Pony, a beautiful belt, lots of Opium perfume. and a new Kindle Fire HD 7, which was totally unexpected.  But the biggest surprise was the giant horned lizard, horny toad as we like to call them, that Bill snuck in under my nose and took me outside to see after all the wrapped presents were opened. What fun!

 
We had taken in the new Hobbit movie on Christmas Eve afternoon, and all went to our candlelight Christmas Eve service at our Methodist Church that night before tucking into bed to wait for Santa to come. Christmas day was full of the gifts, too much to eat, and an afternoon of really good visiting and fellowship.

But the other side of Christmas is that not everyone was as blessed as we were. I’m not bragging about all our wonderful gifts; I am trying to make a point of comparison. God graced us with way more than we deserve. I received this Christmas letter in a card for Tara Simons Orsak, a family friend, former student, and fellow Aggie from Edna, Texas,  the town we moved from to Muleshoe. Her letter touched my heart and I felt the need to share it with you. I asked her permission to reprint part of it just as she wrote it, and she graciously agreed. I couldn’t retell it any better than she said it herself. The event happened closer to Thanksgiving, but it serves, I hope,  to make us all realize we have so many blessings that we fail to recognize, and I think it restores faith in human nature and what love can do. I hope you will read it to the end. Here is what Tara wrote after updating us on other things her family had been up to.

“Events of the past few weeks have forced our family to stop and reflect on the bounty of blessing that we have in each other and in you, our friends. I wanted to share this story with you.

On November 25th, three days after a surprising win in a bi-district football playoff game, one of [her son] Cade’s friends, classmate and teammate, Noah Ortiz, lost his life in a house fire along with his four younger brothers and sisters, Nicholas Ortiz, Julian Ortiz, Lilyana Hernandez, and Areyanah Hernandez.This tragic event devastated our small town. Noah was a defensive tackle for the Edna Cowboys, wearing jersey number 50.

Amazingly, the Edna Cowboy football team, with heavy hearts, rallied around the family that suffered such terrible loss, and continued to play football in Noah’s honor for three more weeks, in a most improbable playoff run, becoming state semi-finalists in Texas’ Division 1, Class 3A bracket.

During the regional playoff game, the first game after losing Noah (#50), Cade as the ball holder, was able to take the hike and lay on the ball in order to forego the extra point after a touchdown and make the final score of the game 50-28, in honor of Noah.

Our opponents in each of the playoff games, representing the towns of Ingram, Halletsville and Cameron, made donations of more than $16,000, $19,000, and $36,000 to Noah’s family prior to each game. In addition, more than $60,00 was collected in two online accounts. God shows his love for us through the actions of others and through tear-filled eyes we have seen that there are many loving people in this world.

There continue to be many tears shed for the loss of these precious children. At the same time, our community has been so excited about the success of our team and humbled by the compassion and generosity of people from other places. We feel that we have all been a part of a nightmarish fairy tale. Our boys have grown as teammates and young men while we have all witnessed God’s plan, power, mercy, strength and love. May we celebrate all of these things god has given us. in addition to the best gift of all, Jesus.”

God’s plan is hard to understand at times, but his grace and his Son are our gifts.

 
Amen.

 

Video news story link: http://usatodayhss.com/2014/edna-cowboys-noah-ortiz-died-in-fire

Christmas is a Road Trip

Ben, Colten, and Maya will be celebrating Christmas at Ben and Maya's house in Kyle, Texas, this year. A Christmas tradition that I accidently started a mere two years ago has now become a tradition, for me anyway, of taking a picture of the grandkids in Santa hats by the tree. This one is from last year at our house. I will be lugging the Santa hats to Kyle so we can do it again this year, and wherever Christmas is next year, the hats will be there, too.

Most Christmases of my childhood involved driving all night from Rosenberg to Olney after Daddy closed the shop, about a ten-hour drive back in the days of two-lane highways, 60 mph speed limits, and no big city by-passes. I can remember sleeping in  the sundeck, that wide flat space behind the back seat under the rear window. Sundecks were much bigger in those days. Being the younger child and petite to boot, I was the one who fit the space; my older sister Louise had the whole back seat to herself. So I spent many hours staring into the night sky amid daydreams of horses and made-up melodramas. As we would leave the flat land around home and begin going up and down the hills, Daddy would challenge us to be the first one to spot the lights of the next town as we topped a hill. The winner got a nickel. I think Weesie, as I called her, would usually win, but always gave in to me if I fussed enough.

December in Rosenberg was more often than not warm, if not down right hot. But by the time we would roll into that little North Texas town in the wee small hours on Christmas morning it would be cold. Grandmother's house had two screened-in back porches with double beds that served as bedrooms for overflow holiday crowds, and sometimes the overflow also slept on the floor on pallets. The screens on the back porches would be covered with canvas tarps that rolled down to block out the cold and icy weather in the winter. Fat lot of good that did! Of course the rooms would still be cold as all get-out. Grandmother heaped on the covers, but would also heat up a brick, wrap it in a towel, and put it at the foot of the bed. Louise and I would gingerly crawl into bed and cringe and giggle as we warmed up our spot and stuck our feet on that brick. Then after the spot our bodies touched warmed up, we would carefully move a leg, an arm, to another spot and try to warm it up. Sleep came easily after that.

Christmas morning the house was always full of more people and more presents than we would have had if we had stayed in Rosenberg because of aunts and uncles and cousins who still lived in that area coming to Grandmother and Granddaddy's house. I liked that. I remember Daddy carefully packing all the wrapped gifts from our house so we could open them at Grandmother's and then pack them all back up to bring right back home. And of course, Santa always found us in Olney instead of Rosenberg.

Grandmother's kitchen was so small that she could make a 180 degree turn from the counter on her Hoosier cabinet where she had fixed a dish and be right there to put it in the oven of her cast iron stove. Her sink had about a two-foot square space of counter top on one side so we washed pots and pans as she cooked since there was no where else to put them. We always had enough food to feed Coxey's army, as she was wont to say. Looking back now as I cook with two ovens, a cooktop, a microwave, a dishwasher, and tons of counterspace, I feel like a rank amateur. No, I am a rank amateur.

We did rotate having Christmas at Grandmother's as well as other relatives' houses, but our house wasn't picked that often, so for me Christmas was hitting the road. Looking back on those trips now, just like with Grandmother's kitchen, I had no idea at the time what Mother and Daddy went through to make Christmas enjoyable for us. Mother asked me one time if it ever bothered me not always being at our own house for the holidays, not opening presents in front of our own tree. I assured her that for me, that  was Christmas, the road trip with Santa at the end. I don't blame young parents who want to create their own traditions in their own homes; that is as it should be. If the decision is to go to Grandmother's, the trip might not take as long, and DVD players and iPods now handle the entertainment, but I assure you that wherever your family spends its Christmases, whatever traditions you begin, your kids will just know that is the way Christmas should be. And then some day your kids will make Christmas for their kids, and the cycle will continue.

Merry Christmas, and to borrow a phrase, God bless us Every One!

Another Christams tradition begun by my mother and continued here by Maya; the fancy hand-made ornamment. The big, old Stetson hat box Mother stored hers in and the paraffin-covered cardboard box for frozen chicken that I use to store  my ornaments are almost antiques now and a tradition in themselves. I always know which boxes to get down when I want to use those ornaments.