Quiet Intention...

First snow - December 26 & 27, 2012

We didn't have a white Christmas but we did have a white Boxing Day...the snow started around 8 o'clock last night and continued through the early morning hours.  It looks lovely.  From inside the warmth of the house.  I opened the front door to snap this photograph and probably because I'm still in my pajamas, I really felt the cold.  The plows haven't been by yet and none of the neighbours have been out to shovel driveways...all of that will come soon enough.

I'm enjoying the silence and the quiet.  Everyone here is on vacation (husband goes back to work after New Year's Day and the guys will go back to their schools next weekend to begin the winter semesters) which means they are still in bed, it's just me, my hot chocolate and a croissant.  I love having everyone home and the house being "full" but I also love to carve out my silent, quiet time.

This was our first "real" year of just 4 at Christmas.  Yes, last year there we were only 4, but my mother-in-law had only just died in the early part of November and it hadn't all settled in that this is what our family was now.  I don't mind it being just the 4 of us.  It's smaller and it's simpler and it's "less" in a good way.  I decorated in a smaller vein as well and I can see next year being the same.  If at some point there are grandchildren then things will change once again, but for now, we'll immerse ourselves in this, family, a smaller unit.  I think it has brought us closer, it has offered us an opportunity to appreciate what we have and it has given us the opportunity to open our home and our arms to friends who are single, to those who welcomed, not in lieu of family...but as we are meant to value one another.

If anything this year, we didn't have less family, we had more.

These days between Christmas and the New Year I find peaceful and soft.  There is a silence that allows me to think, to dream and to plant the seeds for what I hope to see flourish as the next year unfolds.  I don't make resolutions.  I make intentions.  I think about how I would like my life to be and do what I can to make that happen.  It's about me, being more "me" in the best ways that I can.  It's not about being what I see others being or having or doing.  It's like getting out a map and figuring out what direction I'd like to take next.

I hope you are enjoying these quiet, silence filled days.