Happy New Year 2011!!!!

Photos from Atlanta Celtic Christmas concert!



Photo with Kelly our favorite harper. What a talented lady!

Happy New Year!
I really enjoyed our Towhey family gathering on Saturday. Jim has some good photos on his BLOG.

I have a photo of my sweet Aunt Violet and the flowers we sent her. She is my Mother's sister.After church, I picked up our grandson, Aaron and he helped me take the decorations off the two Christmas trees. Jim will be taking the trees out tomorrow. It is sad to take them down. We try to observe the 12 days of Christmas so we don't have to be in a hurry to remove all the decorations at one time. The season is too wonderful and I want to keep it around as long as possible. As Aaron and I removed ornaments, we talked about the special ones. There are ornaments with each grandchild's photo as a baby, ornaments from friends with a special meaning, ornaments I cross stitched for my Mother many years ago that I am so happy to have as a reminder of past Christmas celebrations. We have lovely ornaments hand made by Grandma Towhey (Jim's grandmother) that I cherish. Rachel made some ornaments when she was in kindergarten.

The nativity set my Mother gave me has been in the family over 70 years. It is showing its age so I treat it with tender care.















Aaron asked what I was humming as we worked on the tree. "I wonder as I wander" is an old Appalachian hymn. It has been among my favorites since the late 50's. The old Appalachian custom of "breaking up Christmas" is fun. Families and friends would travel and spend the night at a different home each night of the 12 days of Christmas and at the last day they would sing "breaking up Christmas" and that would end the season. It was a different time. At the Atlanta Celtic Christmas that is one of the last songs of the concert and everyone joins in the celebration.

Until the next time, be sweet, Sue