{"id":27030,"date":"2017-12-23T01:25:42","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T01:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=27030"},"modified":"2017-12-23T03:38:48","modified_gmt":"2017-12-23T03:38:48","slug":"season-of-joy-and-big-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=27030","title":{"rendered":"Season of joy … and big change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I posted this picture a year ago on Facebook, and the site reminded me of it today as a look back.<\/p>\n

Initially, I was reluctant to re-post this image. It made me mildly sad this morning when I saw the Facebook “memory.”<\/p>\n

This picture depicts the final Christmas in the house we called a home for 21 years. It’s dark this year. We’re no longer living there. We have moved on — more or less.\u00a0Our “home” these days is a 28-foot fifth wheel recreational vehicle. It’s parked in a location on the other end of Amarillo. The house? It’s heading for the market, folks.<\/p>\n

This is a season of joy for us. It’s also a season of big change that awaits us just down the road. We don’t quite yet know precisely where the road will take us.<\/p>\n

Don’t misunderstand. We have a general<\/em> idea where we’re going to resettle. It will be somewhere near our granddaughter, who’s now 4 years of age. Every friend we’ve told of our plans — and the reason for our move — has expressed total understanding and support for us. “That’s the best reason I can think of,” I’ve heard from many of our friends.<\/p>\n

However, as I look at the picture attached to this blog post, I am reminded of one of the precious memories this house brought us.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It was Dec. 22, 1996. We had just taken possession of this house, which we had built. We had lived in a one-bedroom apartment since early 1995. Our furniture was stashed away in a storage compartment.<\/p>\n

We closed on the house. We called the mover, who then delivered our goods. We unpacked them.<\/p>\n

Our Christmas tree that year was a potted live Norfolk pine we brought with us from Beaumont. It stood about 4 feet tall. We found some Christmas lights, strung them around the tree.<\/p>\n

We commenced opening our packed boxes and rediscovered the possessions we hadn’t seen in nearly two years.<\/p>\n

It was — hands down — a glorious Christmas indeed in this structure that was filled with that “new house smell.”<\/p>\n

That, too, was a season of change. To that end, the season has come full circle. We are anxious — and we are ready for whatever awaits.<\/p>\n\n

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I posted this picture a year ago on Facebook, and the site reminded me of it today as a look back. Initially, I was reluctant to re-post this image. It made me mildly sad this morning when I saw the Facebook “memory.” This picture depicts the final Christmas in the house we called a home … Continue reading Season of joy … and big change<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[978,3920,4058],"class_list":["post-27030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-christmas","tag-retirement","tag-rv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27036,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27030\/revisions\/27036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}