Merry Christmas 2024

Merry Christmas, friends!

Where to start with 2024... 2024 was bittersweet. We lost Dan's dad Tom in August after a difficult few months with a number of health struggles. Then in September we lost my grandpa, Bito, to a major stroke. As we were navigating these losses, our small rural community was also struck by a series of losses that have reminded us all of the fragility of life. It has been a season of grief. But along the way we also gained a new brother-in-law and new niece, visited and were visited by family, spent some sweet time in California with family and friends, and celebrated some milestones in our not-so-new-anymore life on the prairie.

Every year I say the same things about the kids growing so fast I can't keep my head on straight. But it's true (about the kids and also about my head). This year we doubled the official size of our homeschool, with Eva (9) now in grade 4 and Ben (6) beginning grade 1. To the great delight of their parents, all four kids are enjoying poetry and wordplay, and we have had fun incorporating those things into daily school routines. Numbers are also getting some attention, with Sam (4) working hard to knock all our socks off as a small human calculator. The real question each school day is what Ellie (2) will get up to once she notices the rest of us are distracted. Painting with diaper cream has been a favorite activity, along with just about any mess a little person can get into by dragging kitchen chairs up to things and poking about. 

This year we (especially Dan) spent a lot of time at The Living Room, the movie theater here in town. Along with a group of friends, we were able to launch a summer film series, something that hadn't happened here for quite a while. Dan and I and our friend Braeden hosted a Housemoot conference in November, complete with a candelit Feast of C.S. Lewis and lots of great discussion with friends and neighbors. Then we got to help host part of our town's Christmas kick-off weekend by showing a movie and being part of the annual Christmas pageant of our kids' community theatre group. Just imagine this paragraph smells like buttered popcorn and someone just handed you a mop to soak up a soda spill (but they called it pop, not soda).

We took two trips to California in 2024, once for a wedding and once for a funeral. My sister Christina (No. 4) married Leland in June. It was a beautiful and joy-filled wedding. We enjoyed visiting with extended family and also fitting in a couple beach trips with friends. After harvest we went back for Bito's funeral. That trip was much heavier but also full of good times with family and friends. The big highlight for all of us was going to Grandma and Grandpa's after the funeral for a backyard bonfire and time with ALL the aunties, uncles, and cousins.

Extended family and friends also surrounded and cared for us at Tom's funeral in August, and in the time before and after. There were so many people there from all of the many groups and causes Tom was involved in over the years. And there were so many who contributed to making the day an encouragement to Tom's family and a special memory. We were especially grateful that Dan's Uncle Peter was able to stay with us for a few days afterward. 

So, on we go: further up and further in, as they say in Narnia. Come see us. We still have a guest room downstairs (two actually), if you don't mind cats. Or you could sleep on the couch upstairs, if you don't mind fish. We have popcorn. And poems. 

Whatever kind of journey 2024 has been for you, we pray that Christmas brings hope that Jesus came to dwell with us in these bittersweet days, and to leave a promise that He will come again to make all things new. 

Love,

Emily

The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger,

In all our trials born to be our Friend. 

He knows our need—to our weakness is no stranger. 

Behold your King, before Him lowly bend! 

Behold your King, before Him lowly bend!

from "O Holy Night"

Translator: John S. Dwight; Author: Placide Cappeau (1847)

Merry Christmas 2022!

Dear friends,

Christmas greetings from East Central Alberta!

They say that the days are long but the years are short, but—especially since the birth of our fourth—it seems like the days are too short, too. Suddenly it's December 23 and we haven't sent out any Christmas cards. So here's a little attempt to get back in touch and give an update.

This is our third Christmas in Alberta, but with the strange Covid-y world we were in, there are still many firsts. First off (and nothing to do with Covid), it's the first Christmas for a new person: Elizabeth Lucy Jackson, "Ellie," born January 18. The kids have loved having a baby, and Eva especially has loved having a sister. I'm amazed when I think about God's generous kindness in giving us these four kids to raise. Nevertheless, the year has given me a few dozen more gray hairs and at least one screw loose (yesterday I found a block of cheddar cheese in the drawer with my oven mitts...and then couldn't remember why I'd opened the drawer).

After two years of border restrictions and bizarrely-timed obstacles, my parents have finally booked tickets for their first trip to Canada after Christmas. The separation from family has been painful this year. Thankfully, we were able to go down in July to introduce Ellie to her grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins, and her great-grandpa. The visit was a sweet gift, but not nearly long enough.

Last week we celebrated one of Dan's dreams in moving back to Alberta: a church Christmas drama/program at the theater our church owns, The Living Room. As the world has been coming back to normal, Dan has had more and more opportunities to help at the theater, and he is loving it. I am sure we have the best sound system in a small movie theater in East Central Alberta, and the lighting is also coming along. 

It was a good year for the farm, despite (sometimes because of?) the volatility in grain markets around the world. Once again, the kids loved ride-alongs at seeding and harvest. And, once again, we watched the miracle of life unfold: soil, seeds, rain, sunshine, growth, abundance, harvest (also weeds and gophers). There are always more projects than Dan can get to, but it is clear he is in the right place.

The Lord continues to provide good friends and warm community here. This year we were able to plug in more with local homeschoolers and start Eva (7 [how is she 7???]) in piano and swimming lessons. She is flourishing with school and reading anything she can get her hands on. Ben (4) is ready to start reading whenever his parents are ready to spend just a little bit more time on it. He is taking after Dad with a mechanical mind and is already starting to explain to me how things work. Sam (2) is probably behind most of my gray hairs; he's a busy guy with a huge personality and a million ideas. He can't wait until he can go to work with Dad at the farm. Ellie is a sweet, mostly easy-going baby, except that she believes her bed is a prison. She's getting close to walking, and I foretell she'll be giving Sam a run for his money in the race for who can give Mom more gray hairs.

In June, I stepped down from my job as Legal Writing professor for Oak Brook College of Law (something I'd been doing since 2006!). I have been hosting a Bible Reading Challenge with some dear ladies here and trying to find other ways to exercise gifts that mesh better with my current vocation. Someday soon I would like to write something other than the odd Facebook status. Not a lot of reading happened this year, but my top authors were Wendell Berry and Rod Dreher. Favorite Bible book was Ecclesiastes. Make of that what you will.

The expat experience (and just the general process of getting older in this beautiful but badly bent world) continues to teach me about the longing for Heaven. And Advent this year has been more than ever about echoing that story of the First Long Wait, longing like the prophets of old for another coming we can scarcely comprehend. O come, O come, Emmanuel. Come and dwell with us again.

And, while we wait, if you ever want to come check out Alberta, small-scale-large-scale grain farming, or historic small town theaters with epic sound systems, we've got a seat at the table/tractor/theater for you!

Love,

Emily

PS - Freed from the strictures of Canada Post and the USPS, I can now send you a song! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4sfy420peA

Manly Things in the Kitchen

Wife: "Dan, there's some man paraphernalia over here [in the kitchen, to clean up/put away]"

Husband: "what kind of 'man paraphernalia'?"

Wife: [looks at items left atop the microwave, where the paper towel roll lives]
"Squirt jars?"

Some Ingredients Not Included

Aldi is a place to find many wonderful and oft unusual items. Knock-off Cinnamon Toast Crunch is a good sign; I'm the kind of guy who isn't picky about the name on the box so long as there's the requisite amount of sugar-per-serving.

DIY almond bark... That's a step farther down the dark alley. It's not like Aldi is Ikea--I expect my plastic-wrapped chocolate to be pre-assembled, even at a quirky discount chain like Aldi.

What separates my encounter with the almond bark construction kit from my other Aldi encounters is that there didn't seem to be any almonds in the package--neither slivered, nor sliced. It was, so far as I can tell, a package of baking chocolate with carefully-targeted packaging, expertly placed among holiday decorating and baking paraphernalia to attract unsuspecting novice almond-bark-makers.
I don't know if that's brilliant or diabolical.

mundane

Four blue eyes.

Baby onesies scrubbed with dish soap and lying out to dry in the sun.

The sink full of dishes, then empty, then full again.

Two brown beds (one of them pink) and a play mat with a tiny baby in the mirror and a very frustrating dangling acorn.

An imagination littered with thoughts about history's corpses and corpuses, and a blinking cursor on a white page.

What a small world it was this week. But an infinite one.

sunlight

My first year in high school debate (which was, incidentally, also my last year), the topic was campaign finance reform.

It was true, as Thane used to say in his expository speech in those days, that "the way to tattoo something into your audience's brain is to say it over, and over, and over again. The way to tattoo something into your audience's brain is to say it over, and over, and over again. The way to tattoo something into your audience's brain—"

You get the point.

Back to campaign finance reform: there was a team whose affirmative plan had something to do with publishing information about donors. I don't remember the details of the plan. What I do remember was that throughout the 1AC and interlaced throughout the rest of the debate, the affirmative speaker would say, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

Also that same year, and also in an expository speech, one of the prizewinners from the Point Loma college team talked about all the microscopic beings who share our bedding, and how to eliminate them. The dryer, she said, was highly effective. As was sunlight.

So it is that what I remember most from that first year of academic policy debate (other than "The way to tattoo something into your audience's brain is to say it over, and over, and over again..."—which, now that I think about it, was actually from the second year) is that sunlight has extraordinary cleaning qualities.

I haven't had much opportunity to put this knowledge into practice. (There was that one time in Dahiyyat al-Rashiid when I dragged my mattress out onto the front porch, to Amber Tracy's chagrin, convinced that it was infected with bedbugs. But I never knew if that worked.)

Until motherhood.

Now I use the sun almost every day (or did, until we found a brand of diapers that holds its own most of the time). And it truly is amazing, wiping out stains so quickly that I think that, if I were able to stand still long enough, I believe I could watch them fade.

Sunlight, you've lived up to your hype.

life is living in an apartment

I do not always want linoleum floors.
But I keep them clean.
And I smile to see them freshly mopped.

(Also: this)