While writing the last entry I pulled out the dictionary to check the spelling of "icicle" and found the cool Middle English spelling: isykle. I also noticed that the third definition (a cold or unemotional person) would make a chilling insult: "you icicle, you..."
My thirteen year old cousin talks about setting cellphones on rumble rather than on vibrate. He also says that cats vibrate rather than purr.
We've been enjoying the past couple days with my grandparents and aunt, uncle and cousins here at our house, carrying on with our Christmas celebration. They arrived from Delaware Monday afternoon, and we opened gifts before and after dinner. Each year Grandma has a secret theme gift, and this year her theme was our Irish ancestory: her father was Irish, which makes me 1/8th Irish. Anyhow, she had a coded message, and we had to break the code correctly or we wouldn't receive our gifts. Fortunately, it was a simple letter subsititution, so it didn't take too long to crack. I received a book about celtic music, reviewing the recording and performing history of the genre since the 1960s to the present, and a book of tunes for the tin whistle.
Yesterday the girls (my mom, sister, grandma, aunt, and cousins) went out yarn shopping, antique shopping, and to the English Rose Tearoom, while dad and grandpa drove around to some civil war historic sites on missionary ridge, and I went with my brother, cousin, and uncle for a hike along the Bluff Trail, starting from Covenant. We found the coolest icicles on the side of the rock faces; water would be running down the rock faces behind the ice sheets, and where there were overhangs the icicles looked like fangs. On our return trip we stopped by a particularly thick bunch of icicles and started throwing rocks at them to break the top of the bunch off. Our uncle even got in on the action, and I took a few photos which should be fun pictures once they're developed. Then we met up with Dad and grandpa for pizza at Mr. T's--fun times.
After a beef stew dinner last night we were hanging around, enjoying being together; the girls were knitting and watching a movie, folks were talking, reading; and in a game of Finger Baseball Mullica Hill (my uncle) beat Ringgold (me) with two runs in the tenth inning after a no-score game the first nine innings.
This Christmas morning, after reading Luke 2, my dad thanked the Lord in prayer for "all the loot" we were about to open. I'm not sure I remember much of the rest of the prayer... the humor of his choice of words had distracted me too much. We were all barely able to keep from cracking up while he was praying, and when he finished we all busted out laughing. However, I realized that we have much more than our gifts to be thankful for: we are Jesus' loot.
Loot is stuff taken in battle--the spoils of the victor--and Isaiah 53:10-12 makes it so clear that we are Jesus' loot. He bore our sins, we're his offspring--those who have been justified. If we weren't his loot, then there'd be no real reason to celebrate Christmas. So this year, we're thankful for Christmas loot.
Enjoy your loot!