May the joy and love
you feel this holiday season
extend to every day
throughout the year.
you feel this holiday season
extend to every day
throughout the year.
Christmas 2009
I love a quotation by Ralph Waldo Emerson – “This time, like all times, is a very good one if you know what to do with it.” Isn’t that a wonderful challenge for all of us – knowing what to do with our good times? Christmas is an especially enchanting time and it is with joy that I greet each one of you – family and friends.
There have been a lot of changes this year at the Mathews’. Last spring, when Gary was still feeling fairly able, we had his 65th Birthday Party/Open House and many of you came or wrote to share your love with Gary; he loved the day. It was a short six weeks later that cancer took his life and ended his three and a half year battle with various health challenges. It has been a pretty good life and, I am sure, he is in much better health now.
Needless to say, there has been some adjusting for me to do. Beth has been here at home with me and we thought that she would be here until she returned to school next fall. But an email yesterday has changed all that. She will be returning to Taiwan for another six month stint as an intern/teacher in a Chinese preschool where she will be teaching English to 3-5 year olds. She loved her first semester there and is excitedly looking forward to another.
Beth and I have spent a fair amount of time sorting and “sifting” through the layers of accumulation from 29 years of living in this house and 34 years of living in Toledo. I am sure that many of you can identify with the pain, the memories, and the release that comes with going through and reducing your holdings. It would be good to be lighter in weight in many ways. There is always next year.
Earlier this fall I went to New England with my mother and brother – to visit “home” and places familiar and places new. The next month I went with our eldest son, Ben, wife, Sonia, and their children, Katrina (8), Samuel (6), and Sarah (4) to Disneyland. I highly recommend going to such a place with children – such a wonderful, happy adventure!
Before the New England trip, I got to spend a bit of time with our next oldest grandchild, Jacob (3 years old and son of Libbey and Erick). We added Aubrey (daughter of Joel and Becky, in Virginia) to our family in February and even got to see her before Gary died. We will be adding another granddaughter in April of next year – Nathan and Sallee’s first.
This time of year is a wonderful time for acknowledging blessings and gifts from our Heavenly Father. They are many and time makes them more evident; foremost is the gift of our Savior. May you enjoy a time of blessing and peace this Christmas season and into the New Year.
