Merry and Bright and Otherwise

It has been quite a December! Amid the dishes a-washing, laundry a-folding, and boxes a-packing there have also been many festive and sweet moments tucked in.

Special dinner with Mr. Kevin and Miss Sue

Our little family Christmas (coinciding with a new round of colds), 

and new sleeping bags to snuggle in during neb treatments

We got together with the Kattersons for a little Christmas celebration the night before we hoped to go to Iowa. It was a fun time, with jambalaya, games, gifts, and skyping Grandma Kay!

We made it to Iowa! 

Here is our houseful of cousins watching Shaun the Sheep

Pizza Ranch with Grammy and some droopy little boys

So good to see Grandma Vaupel and Aunt Sue!

All the boys were sniffling, coughing, sneezing, and generally seeming sluggish and lethargic. Elliot was not eating or sleeping well, and they were just feeling pretty crummy.

That night, instead of the planned big family dinner all together, we had a "big Katterson trip to the urgent care," where 2 of 3 boys were discovered to have ear infections.

After many prayers and several doses of antibiotics, 

we were able to get all the cousins together 

for Grammy's special ornament activity!

A little cutie pie (and a big one) able to smile again

Sometimes Christmas, with all its togetherness (or not), chaos, bad attitudes, sleeplessness, and viruses, provides an uncomfortable reminder that Jesus' first advent was not a journey of unbroken sweetness and cheer. The reason that Perfect Child came (in the chill and smelly welcome of a barn) was to unbreak the painful brokenness of our world, to extract the poison sting of sin and death, and by His own bruised body to crush the serpent's head. What a Savior!