Winter Solstice

With the Winter Solstice happening on Monday, and Christmas falling just four days later on the 25th (the day the winter solstice was pegged to on the Julian calendar), I thought I'd kick off winter with a couple Christmas- / winter-themed photos.

This year for the first time in four Christmases as homeowners, I decided to hang Christmas lights from the roof. There were a few contributing factors that led me to do this uncharacteristic thing:

1. Ever since serving a mission to Norway, where extreme changes in the seasons accompany the high latitude--with little to no daylight during the winter in large parts of the country--I've come to appreciate ever more the importance of sharing light during the days leading up to the darkest day of the year.
   
2. Directly related to the importance of light at this time of year, I have a great appreciation of the Christmas symbolism of light as we observe the birth of the Savior, the light of the world.
   
3. Living in a part of the country that by some accounts has the smallest numbers of LDS per capita, I have felt a heightened desire to make sure our neighbors understand that we, too, celebrate Christmas and the birth of the Savior .
   
4. It is one very small way for me to unite with Margie and overcome my ingrained Scrooge-like ways a time of year that is of special importantance to her and especially the boys.

Below you can see that no small sacrifice was required to make this happen! Somehow I survived, and we now have a nice row of lights hanging from the roof in the front of the house. I've even started to think about how I can elaborate on this next year. It may all depend on whether I can leave up the light clips we used and if they will last until next year. We shall see.

Merry Christmas!

Defying death for the lights' sake.

During one of the relatively less-risky moments

It all looks relatively tame when you don't see the 3-story drop.

We had our first big snowfall of the year today.

...so we put Felix and Rex to work shoveling the driveway.

Then rewarded ourselves with play when the work was done.