Our Star

This is our Christmas star.  We love it because  there are a lot of stories that go with this star and it represents a lot of different "seasons" in our life. 
This is the story of our star:

It was made for us and given to us by one of our bestest friends.  He is so creative and thoughtful and just showed up with it SEVERAL years ago.  He made about 10 of them I think and gave them to friends.  He is such a giver, and so incredibly thoughtful.  He is known for these kinds of deeds, and he always does these things just quietly and beautifully.  We absolutely love him and his entire family. 
 Thank you Jim Walker for the star.

Well, as I mentioned he made one for several families around here...and every year it is a bit of a competition to see who gets their star up first, and it always exciting to see  what color and arrangement of bulbs everyone decides on for the year.  It's very fun and a bit competitive. 

Needless to say....we never win the competition.
  We always get our star up, but it's usually Rick Martin that beats us, and it's usually Jim that puts his star up the highest, and it usually Pickardt's that looks the most festive, and Buckners and us are usually neck in neck, which is all good because we live close enough to see each other's star, so we can easily monitor who's pulling the star out of storage so the other is never far behind.

Then,

2 years ago, Charlie cut his hand VERY bad, and I was thinking it was a 'no star year'.  He was in a cast.  But, of course our friends came over and just put that beautiful star up for us...it  also happened to be one of the coldest days of the year I believe, and we have a very tall metal roof that they had to climb on to get our star in position. 
 It was so incredibly sweet I can't tell you how blessed we felt.  Of course, they put beautiful bulbs in, and made it look perfect.
  They also SCREWED IT TO THE ROOF so it is very secure up there; it is SO secure that we don't take it down all year long, we just don't plug it in after New Years.

So, this year...we plugged our star in;
our star that represents so much to us...
it represents...Christmas...friendship...giving...serving...celebration...competition :) .


  As I was looking at it this year...I just had to laugh...it also is very representative of the year we have had:


It is disorganized...late (even though we only had to plug it in), and its only half lit. 
 Some of the bulbs are flickering, some are shining brightly, some are flickering (as they are trying like heck to stay going), they are every color and in no particular order, and some are just plain burned out.

Charlie was going to replace some bulbs and try to make it pretty, and organized, but the more I looked at it, the more I loved it because it's just up there on our roof telling the truth of what is going on in the house below.

Merry Merry Christmas!!!