It's Christmas!

About a month ago I drove up to visit my grandkids and do a photo shoot for the Christmas card. I pictures something a little different, but we take what we can get when we’re dealing with wild animals and children.

I thought we might have “Mary” sitting on the donkey, and “Joseph” leading it with a rope. But it turned out our donkeys were actually wild. They belong to one of granddaughter, Little Political Sphere 1’s, friends from school. They live in a small Texas town (one elementary school), and the friends live on some acreage down the road, where they raise some calves for sale, but otherwise work in normal in-town jobs. The donkeys lived on the property when they bought it well over a decade ago. 

The one in the photo, Jack, was tame enough to come up and eat carrots out of your hand. So we fed him a lot. And took what we could get. I would have liked a different angle, but then we’d have had to move the truck, and we didn’t know if we’d get the donkey back. The other donkey—more standard looking, with the cross on her back—took one carrot from my very large son. That was more than she usually does.

In most of the photos Little PS1 was so thrilled to be feeding the donkey that she had a huge smile that didn’t say “I’m weary from traveling all the way from Nazareth.” And we were limited by Little PS2’s attention span. But it was a fun time, with a photo good enough for our purposes.

Not sure what to do for next year’s photo.

I’ve been enjoying the music of the season as well—I always do. Besides the choir, and playing with my dulcimer jam group at a few parties, I’ve had my Pandora station set to Pentatonix holiday. I like more and more of their music.

Favorites have included their “Little Drummer Boy” and “Mary, Did You Know?” This year the one that got my attentions is “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

One more I’ve enjoyed this year is Peter Hollens and 300 friends (including BYU’s Vocal Point) doing Carol of the Bells. This fun version makes me like this song again.