Dear Reader:

When Mollie texted me Friday night about bringing the boys and Eloise to come visit me…(Eloise’s first look at Boo Boo’s home…and visit to Summerville) I was so delighted! Immediately I thought of family who had been dying to see her but the flu bug and cold weather had been on-going deterrents… who would now have their chance.

As it turned out Doodle, Lassie, and Carrie were going to be together in Summerville so everything fell into place. Eloise’s first debut to her extended, adoring family.

After everyone left Saturday afternoon…the thought came to me that God, in all His wisdom, purposefully decided to have His son enter the world as a baby too for all the same reasons Eloise’s arrival was so successful.

There is something so magnetic, pure, and innocent about a newborn baby’s entrance into the world and into the family. Everyone understands, at different levels, that life, as it has been known, is forever changed. You can’t return to how it was before the infant arrived…nor would you want to.

Only a few days into a little baby’s appearance, everyone attached to the child, in whatever relationship, can’t remember a time when the child wasn’t part of this family on earth.

Jesus’s arrival  would change so many different relationships between Him, his Father, and His fellowman that, the world, would never be the same…just better than the empty vacuum Jesus entered as a newborn. One little baby can draw family and friends back together again like no other event can achieve. A newborn restores our faith in hope, in life, and in our eternal existence.

Thank you Eloise for bringing family together again yesterday…to see you and delight in the person you will one day become…a change-agent for good in a wearied world in desperate need of renewed hope for mankind’s future.

*My across the street neighbor, Vickie, was able to walk over and meet our newest addition to the family before Eloise had to return home.

Eloise really took to Doodle….a little extra twinkle in her eyes…like she is thinking “Wait a minute…I know you from somewhere!”

Haven’t you heard that when a baby looks over your shoulder she is giggling at the angels behind us?

The boys would check in periodically to see what Eloise was up to…but mainly they just enjoyed being little boys…eating cupcakes and playing with scooters, swings, and things that move.

This little window that separates the bedroom hall from the den has been a favorite “peek-a-boo” spot from the time we bought this house…in the early eighties… when I was expecting Tommy.

Oh…the time is flying too fast and now I know how even more precious these first months are with a a new baby in the family..because you can never  get back those moments of pure entrancement and love as you stare back into a tiny one’s soul…

So until tomorrow…

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Sprucing up the deck for the coming of spring. It will come!

*Another God Wink…the day the blog post on the Friendship Train came out Jackson found some boxes of photos that didn’t get destroyed completely in the flood and lo and behold there was a picture taken in 1949 of her grandfather at a gathering of WWI veterans to honor the French Gratitude (Merci) state boxcar in Greenville. (Jackson’s grandfather (Robert Nyle) is the second from the right at the bottom of the picture.

*Beverly Parkison had a God Wink experience with a hummingbird too…

Love both little stories. I have never seen up close a nest of hummers but I did witness a mother humming bird pick up her baby , by the head, and direct it to a flower. One of those once in a life time things. Enjoy your weekend.