New Year's Day......

The new beginning is pretty drab looking. A skiff of snow, green grass, a bad looking fake tree and no leaves on the trees. The wreath is looking good but the Christmas season is n ow over.and it will be time to take it all down.

The new neighbor starting put up his in November.  He loves Christmas and he just kept adding more decorations. It put a smile on his face and I am glad he had such a good time.

Looking back at the year we had a lot of balance. We had some very good things that we experienced and to balance that we lost a lot of people in our lives.  It was a different year for us without our much loved border collie.  We were able to go places with his loss but we would have stayed home one more year if it meant we could have kept him for another year.

The experiences were so new and different for us this past year. We traveled to the North Shore for a long awaited visit. We got a couple of trips to Kansas Cities, one was for our 35 wedding anniversary. We went to the State Fair for a good visit. Our biggest bravest journey was a 10 day tour of Israel. One never knows what to expect but we were beyond amazed of that experience.

We visited a recreated manger in one part of Bethlehem. Historically it was not the real place but it did bring people in to see what the manger could have looked like. The other site was at another area in Bethlehem. When they have a religious site, they seem to build up over the top of it to protect it. A large church was built over the believed site of the birth of Christ. The church is big and is called the Church of the Nativity.

The birth place site is below this large building. Two different congregations share this church. There is also a Catholic church that sits beside this building. Bethlehem is in Palestine, Arab Muslim, territory.  There are Arab, Palestinians, that are Christians but ironically a Muslim tower sits across from this church and the Muslims chant with large speakers toward the church five times a day. The facts are that the whole area was filled with 80% Christians but in the past ten years a silent persecution  has driven out 70% of them.  Only 1% in the area are Christians now and the rest is Palestinian Arabs,Christian and Muslim, and now Turkish (Muslim) inhabitants. The politics of Eastern Israel continues to be unsteady.

We spent our New Year's morning at the bookstore and then went out for lunch.  The rest of the day will be rest time. We don't watch football so we will watch movies this evening.

Happy New Year to all my blog friends.  Thanks for stopping by today.