December 27th, 2018

And then, finally, there it was.  The the actual, for real, honest to goodness Christmas Day.  December 25th.  A much quieter kind of celebration that started with sleeping late,  relaxing and eating coffee cake and pecan rolls (both store bought but hey...).

Eventually the day moved on to such things as bouquets of Christmas flowers:

And sitting under the tree to open presents:

Eventually we stirred ourselves enough to clean up a bit and send some Christmas messages. Thank goodness for techology!  Phone calls, emails, text messages flew in all directions.

We spent most of the rest of the day relaxing on the sofa, playing with our new toys, watching alternately old Christmas movies (my choice) and the Mythbusters Merrython (Tim's choice) and, in my case, occasionally napping until it was time for dinner.

It was as if all the hubbub of our Anniversary and then Christmas and everything that led up to both, while fun in the extreme, wore me out and by the time Christmas Day finally arrived, I  allowed myself to relax and enjoy it all.  It was a peaceful day. I'm thinking "Silent Night" might be the right song to underscore our Christmas with and there ain't  Nothin' wrong with that!

We finished the day, once night fell,  by walking around our local arboretum which was fully decorated with Christmas lights. Each tree, some benches, some fences, the gazebo and even the walkways were lit up and every single one was unique.  We marvelled and oogled and sometimes walked quietly side by side through the spectacle, eyes tired but shining with child-like delight.  And then Tim spied this:

 A tiny live owl sitting in one of the decorated trees!  He is reflected green from the Christmas lights that are surrounding him.  He didn't appear to be bothered by the lights or the people walking by, but rather curious about it all.  As good as all the decorations were, this little owl was absolutely the best one.

On the way home, we passed this and laughed out loud.  In case we weren't certain before, we now knew that we were having Christmas in Florida for sure.  

And so the Christmas season is officially done.  Soon the tree will be packed away, the lights will come down and I will undecorate the house.  Life will resume it's normal pace. Or what passes for normal anyway ;)  

I hope your Christmas was exactly what you hoped it would be and what you  hoped for had at least a little bit of magic in it.  Ours certainly did.