This man builds four different shadow figures. There’s a musical accompaniment with a narrative as well, so turn on the sound.

Every year, the Missouri Botanical Garden offers a holiday light display called “Garden Glow.” Ted and I decided we should experience it before the lights were turned off on January 6. It was a calm, crisp January evening and we had a beautiful holiday walk in the park (literally).

Everything seems to eventually become an abbreviation these days, and this event was no exception. At the entrance to the garden, the decorators assumed “Garden” and simply announced the display as “Glow.” All of the light displays were prettier than the pictures. In addition, pretty instrumental music played softly throughout the garden all the while we walked.

From a distance, this looked like a wall of hanging lights. As we came closer, we saw that it was a number of individual large trees with strings of lights hanging from their branches.

This display changed color every few seconds.

The Botanical Garden has a hedge maze all year, and it was decorated with lights for the holidays. Past experience has taught me that I get claustrophobic and panicky in mazes, so I avoid them. In this case, I figured it couldn’t be too bad to walk through it because the building where I stood to take the photo on the right was at the entrance, and I could always see it from within the maze. All I had to do to get out was head toward that building. It worked. Ted and I walked through the maze and I could always see which direction to go to get out. The downside was that there were no visible shortcuts, so it took a long time to navigate the twists and turns to get to the exit. It was fun to be wandering between walls of holiday lights with other people also working their way through the maze.

These tree displays also changed colors every few seconds. No matter which color they were, the lights were beautiful.

A projector decorated this building differently about every 30 seconds. We watched for almost twenty minutes, and didn’t see a repeated projection, so we walked on.

This was my favorite display. The picture looks a little eerie, but the blue lights on the huge tree had a magical quality in person. I almost expected to see Christmas fairies.

It was a beautiful winter night and there were fire bowls and refreshment stands with warm beverages throughout the park. Ted and I were dressed warmly and had a wonderful time. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

‘Twas the month of Christmas, and all through the house there were things to be done. I always enjoy having our house decorated for Christmas and eating cookies and candy that, for unknown reasons, we only make at Christmas time. One of my favorite decorations is this tatted mobile that Ted’s mother made.

Thom and I have a Christmas tradition of giving each other a miniature Lego set each year. Based on the price and the online photo, I selected a Santa sleigh and reindeer set for Thom. I thought it was so cute, I ordered one for myself too. The eight bags of pieces I found when I opened the box was my first clue that this was not a miniature set. I think I should have also checked the number of pieces in the set–390!

This set far out-sized the miniatures Thom and I usually exchange. (See the photo on the right, below.) As a result, I had to display it with something larger to keep it from looking like Will Ferrell beside the other elves in “Elf.”

Kathy and Annette invited us to spend Christmas in Kirksville with them. (That sounds like a Hallmark Christmas movie, doesn’t it?) They had a pretty little Christmas tree in the living room.

On Christmas Day, we all wore our Christmas socks. Ted decided to show a little leg; we women were more modest.

Santa was good to us. Ted was happy with a Dairy Queen gift card and a plastic banana split–a symbol of one of his favorite sundaes.

I was thrilled to discover a soft and cozy fleece shirt in my gift-wrapped box.

Kathy’s cat kitchen towel made us laugh.

Annette said the over-sized “Crazy Cat Lady” mug was the perfect gift for her. The towel cat looks less certain of that.

We all pitched in to put Christmas dinner on the table. Annette (the vegetarian) roasted a perfect turkey. What a shame she didn’t eat any of it–it was delicious! Ted poured the wine, and a pumpkin turtle pie was a perfect finish for the meal.

After a long weekend in Kirksville, Kari invited us to join her family for Christmas in St. Charles (another Hallmark movie). It was a happy gathering with a delicious dinner and more gifts for everyone.

I attended one more holiday gathering with some fellow retirees from the college. We enjoyed lunch together and several hours of good conversation. We didn’t do a gift exchange and we had separate checks for lunch, but the holiday spirit was definitely with us. Left to right are me, Liz, Heather, Paula, Terri, and Paula’s husband, Bill. Kathy, Cindy, Elaine, and Yvonne were unable to join us. Bill didn’t say much. He might have been out-talked by five women.

Christmas 2023 is now in the past. The decorations have been put away and the candy and cookies are (nearly) gone. Here’s a picture of my mini Lego tree from Thom. I’m getting discouraged asking for world peace every year, but hope springs eternal, so my holiday wish is once again for peace on earth and good will toward all in 2024.

Dewey’s is Ted’s and my favorite pizza restaurant, and we go there often because we both like pizza. In December, we received an email from Kyle, one of Dewey’s managers.

The next time we were at Dewey’s, we were presented with a bag bearing a gift tag with our name on it. The manager who gave it to us (not Kyle) thanked us for our patronage and mentioned that we were one of their top five customers in 2023. (We like pizza a lot.) We thanked him for the gift bag, but waited until we were home to open it. Our gift was two Dewey’s glasses and a $50 Dewey’s gift certificate. Even better than pizza is free pizza!