A day of rest

I've spent most of today on the sofa, recovering from days of shopping, chopping, cooking, cleaning and then packing up twelve bins of santa decor yesterday. We have all enjoyed grazing on leftovers, but it's about time to purge the fridge as we get the house put back to normal before New Years Eve. 

Tomorrow the husband and I will be trailering all of my santas to the new house for storage. Upside to the new digs is that in addition to 5500 sq feet of living space, we also have two separate oversized two car garages, one each for me and the husband. I've decided to use the other half of my garage to house tall metal shelves that will hold my tens of bins full of seasonal decor. This will be so much easier to access for placing and then putting away as I age.

I ran across these potato chips at my favorite grocery store recently. When we lived in England, I found some interesting crisp flavors. However, this one just makes no sense to me. I could understand apple pie flavored pita chips, but not potato chips. <shrug>

The dogs have enjoyed lots of little seasonal tidbits tossed from the table. Our oldest boy Ollie could definitely use these treats I found at a local pet store to help with his rather gassy gut after enjoying a richer-than-usual diet the past few days.

Merry Christmas 2022

Another Christmas has come and gone, our first without mother. As we prepped way too much food for the 24th-25th like we always did when she was alive, it was bittersweet. I whipped up her cheese log, the same one she started making when I was in middle school. Her hot crab dip is another tried and true favorite we've enjoyed for decades. But the girls and I also decided to branch out with a couple new recipes, like pulled pork sliders and balsamic caramelized onion dip. We have leftovers crammed in the fridge, but I'm sure the husband will do his best to put a dent in them over the next few days.

Around midweek, an Arctic blast blew through Texas. The temps outside dropped so low so fast that the windows fogged up. We had to schlep up to the other two houses we own to winterize them for the hard freezes and do our best to avoid broken pipes.

Since it will be our last Christmas in this house, I decided not to haul out all of my Santas because they'll need to be moved to the new place in a few months once we finish a bit of updating. It still looked like Santa Claus came to town, just not to the same extent as usual. 

Tonight before I go to bed, I'll read the last entry in my Christmas devotional. I've highlighted lots of gold nuggets this month. One of my favorite days was Dec 15 when the author used 1 Kings 18:18-24. I immediately recognized the scripture since we studied it earlier this fall in BSF. 

What God wants for Christmas is simply your bended knee. We were made to worship - our internal circuitry wired to worship. Every moment you live, you live bowed to something. And if you don't choose God, you'll bow down before something else - some banal Baal.

This Christmas season, I've tried to focus on His presence rather than presents. Our world needs less "stuff", but waaay more faith, hope and joy. The miraculous gift of Christmas is and always has been God's great love and mercy for us, His creation. He sent love incarnate into the manger in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago to provide a path for our salvation, drawing us back to Him. It's a gift we can never earn, but rather humbly accept in the spirit He provides it. May your walk from today through epiphany be one of peaceful rediscovery of God's holy presence in your life.

Israel odds & ends, the final post

I wanted to finish blogging about my Israel trip before Christmas, and here I am sliding in on the 22nd with a final post. It truly was the trip of a lifetime and I'm looking forward to visiting again once the husband retires.

The day we logged over seven miles of walking included a visit to a wonderful local open air market. We spent more than we intended on teas and spiced nuts, but it was a lot of fun getting to sample all of the options before we made our pricey purchases.

The t-shirts for sale in old town Jerusalem were interesting, mainly because there were so many US sports teams I recognized. I especially enjoyed seeing the one for Texas Tech.

We spied this bird taking a bath in a puddle atop Temple Mount one morning. It paid us zero attention and seemed singleminded about getting clean.

It seems that Y'ALL has hopped both the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

The historic and quite beautiful YMCA was across the street from our hotel in Jerusalem, lit every night to provide an excellent point of reference when out sightseeing.

I have no information about this building in the pic above, but I loved how the exterior featured tromp l'oeil decoration so that the actual balconies on the right side were duplicated in paint on the front.

I had hoped to do a bit of shopping during our layover at Heathrow. Thanks to fog and a three hour delay, we had to hot foot it to our gate. And so all I got was a quick snap of the Pret in our terminal as we hurried to catch our next flight.

Via Dolorosa

Our last full day in Israel, we walked the Via Dolorosa. Latin for sorrowful way or way of suffering, it's a route through the old city of Jerusalem believed to be the path Jesus walked to his crucifixion. Keep in mind that the route was established in the 1700s, marked by fourteen stations of the cross, and so it's not so much this was Jesus' actual path but rather a place pilgrims can came to pray and contemplate what their savior suffered en route to Calvary.

Passing through busy streets that tend to be more narrow than modern thoroughfares, each station of the cross is marked by a Roman numeral plaque. These spots coincide with an event mentioned in the New Testament. Not just Good Friday, but rather every Friday there is a procession that takes place on the Via Dolorosa.  

You can see my pics above and below from various stations that I had time to take a quick snap in the sea of humanity before we were on to the next one.

The station seen below at the top of the stairs is #10 outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus was stripped of his clothes before being nailed to the cross. I can hardly bear it when I think of the humiliation and pain he suffered for humanity as he took our sins so that we can be washed clean in God's sight.

Matthew 27:50 tells us, "And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit." Judas, Herod, Pontius Pilate and the Roman soldiers didn't take his life - Jesus loved us so much that he suffered the horrors of crucifixion unto death that led to resurrection in order to assure our salvation. As I heard in a sermon recently, he reaped what we sowed. Hallelujah and amen!

Masada, Qumran & the Dead Sea

The next morning we traveled south of Jerusalem to tour one of the most famous historic sites in Israel - Masada. An ancient mountaintop fortress, it's where the Jews made a last stand against the Romans after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

There was a stark beauty to the place. Situated atop an isolated mesa, it's famous for the palaces and fortifications Judean King Herod the Great built during his reign. 

To access the site, we took a cable car ride to the top for some amazing views to the Dead Sea. After we exited and trekked up a bit, we got to explore the ruins. If you look closely at the picture below, you'll see a black line zigzagging across the wall showing what was intact below it. Everything above the black line was reconstructed.

After Herod's death, Masada was captured by Romans. The Zealots, a Jewish sect that staunchly opposed Roman domination, took it by surprise in 66 AD. The steep slopes of the mountain made Masada virtually impenetrable once the Jews occupied it. 

After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple, Masada was the last remnant of Jewish rule in Palestine. Besieged by Roman legions, it took almost two years for them to gain access to the fortress. In the pics below you'll see their scheme to gain entry to Masada - siege ramps. I've drawn a black line atop the siege ramp, and circled the Roman camp that was home to the soldiers for the couple years it took to breach the walls. The second and third pics below show other Roman camps - see them?

Alas, the Zealots decided they preferred death to enslavement. When the Roman soldiers entered the fortress, they discovered that almost 1000 people had committed suicide. Masada was designated a UNESCO world heritage site in 2001. I assumed it received this distinction for Herod's construction work. However, it was actually the camps, fortifications and attack ramp that encircle the monument which are the most complete Roman siege works surviving to present day that earned Masada the designation.

Our next stop was Qumran, the location where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 by local Bedouins. Found in caves (see below), stored in clay jars, there were a total of 972 texts. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Nabatean, it contained the oldest known existing copy of the Old Testament. 

The scrolls are believed to have belonged to the Essenes sect based upon information on the scrolls that described the inhabitants and their particular slant on Judaism. It's believed the Essenes settled here to live in isolation in a communal monastery-like setting. As we walked amongst the archaeological ruins, we saw quite a few mikvehs, which are baths used for Jewish ritual purification. 

After lunch at a resort on the Dead Sea, we enjoyed a wonderful afternoon taking a break from our busy touring schedule to just relax.

I snapped the pic above for two of the sweet ladies on our tour, Mary and her daughter Catherine. Thanks to all that salt (see some that we gathered up from the bottom as we waded in), you really do float like a cork in the Dead Sea.