“Let’s get something fun for the yard. We’re always so serious with our figures of Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus,” Becky suggested. The neighbors have whirling balls, snowflakes, and snowmen showing on their outside walls. For once, I said what husbands smarter than me say, “Okay.”

Off to Home Deport we went.  Now we often hear of the ordeals of December shopping, but this was not the case Saturday. People crowded into the narrow aisles containing the decorations were polite and patient.  We especially enjoyed a young mother and her three boys picking out items.  When we showed interest in what they were selecting the boys gladly showed us. They reminded us of our family when we were much younger.

There was such an assortment of decorations, even a pink pig.  Some could be turned on with an app.  But We don’t know apps from apse from asps.  I’ll stop there.

I had previously set our 50-year wood toboggan by the front door.  Not much use down here where winter is like three months of Wisconsin November.  It turns out Becky had a theme in mind.  We now have on the green grass of our front yard a lighted penguin, a creature of the Antarctic, standing atop an igloo, a structure of the north artic, holding a fish out to a smaller penguin standing on an ice block.  The toboggan is outlined with a string of multicolored lights.  Standing in the corner is the holy family, surrounded by adoring creatures, a frog, a cat, four turtles and a fox.  Jesus from his manger crib is watching over it all in answer to our prayer, “Savior of the Nations Come.”