Status Updates From The Twenty-four Days Before...

Here we go! Tomorrow the conclusion of the story arrives. I have loved this book most of my life, and one of these years I intend to flesh out the full review it deserves. It probably won't be in 2025, though; I'm beat from all the Christmas events and merriment, irreplaceable and fun as it all is.

The Christmas decorating at the Austin farmhouse is all but complete!

More Christmas prep...

Final decorating is happening for Christmas! In fact, the next three days are each about one sentence each. The eighteenth is less than that.

Pageant rehearsals are ramping up...

Three flakes of snow? I wonder if they're foreshadowing a more substantial deluge.

Every time Vicky helps solve one problem, another arises. This Christmas is a real Whack-a-Mole experience.

Still snowless this far into December, I see. We probably won't get any snow prior to Vicky's Christmas pageant debut as the angel...

Vicky Austin is making this work! She's going to be ready by the night of the church Christmas pageant.

Vicky is already earning her way to excellence in the Christmas pageant...

I've probably commented on this date in past years, but the events of December 8 in the book always feel like a turning point. Vicky Austin goes from rueing her inability to portray a graceful angel in the pageant, to buckling down and working hard on fulfilling her potential.

I even love reading about the Austins' Christmas decorating in this book. Let's hear it for the string of "merry Norwegian elves"! :-)

Santa and his elves up the bannister!

No snow yet, but I have the feeling that will change in a big way before page forty-eight...

Ah, yes, the Austin family Christmas mobile. I recollect every day of this book so well.

I'd like to finally sit down after Christmas and craft the in-depth review this book deserves, but it's such a busy time of year and my creative energy is often at an ebb.

I love meeting the Austins on this date each year.

My annual read of this commences today. All the way up, one day at a time, through Christmas Eve...

On the eve of Christmas Eve, and the baby hasn't started coming yet. Will Mother be home for Christmas after all?

This year, the days of the week in this book correspond with those in real life. As Vicky and her family went to church on the 23rd, so my family will be leaving for church in an hour and a half.

"But I'd give up anything, even being the angel, if Mother could be home for Christmas." Hmm...

So close to the day of the Christmas pageant, and the baby hasn't come yet...