That is how many questions Ezra asked during the not quite 3 hours it took us to decorate our house for Christmas.  Yes, I actually did count.  No, I’m not exaggerating.  If you know my son, you know he is rather inquisitive and in this case his overwhelming enthusiasm for all things Christmas decor expressed itself in the form of question after question…after question.

“Daddy, can we put the tree in my room?  Daddy, is it going to snow as soon as we put the tree up?  Can we have 4 trees, one for each of us?  Daddy, can I put ornaments on now?…How about now?…Now?”  I honestly don’t know if anything he said was not posed as a question.  It was amazing, really.  The kid is crazy pumped about lights, angels, ornaments, nativities, stockings and trees and he was genuinely excited to show Calla all we had accomplished while she napped.

As a tradition, right after Thanksgiving every year we decorate the house (probably like everyone else) and go to Hobby Lobby.  Yes, we head to the magical pathway of dazzling, sparkling, over-stimulation called the ornament aisle and we each pick out a super awesome ornament.  Crystal and I have done this since our first Christmas after getting married in June of 2001.  Crystal is into ballerina type things, I like dinosaurs (obviously) and anything overly obnoxious.  Ezra and Calla will pick 7 or 8 ornaments before we weed it down to one apiece.  Taking small children into an aisle with hundreds of dangling objects of glass is incredibly brave…but we are the Woods family, its just how we roll.

So today was awesome.  We ate Christmas cookies, drank hot chocolate, decorated our house, and answered roughly 35% of Ezra’s questions (with a 2-3 point margin of error) to an awesome Christmas soundtrack of The Chipmunks, Sufjan Stevens and Brenda Lee.

This last week was bonkers…a restful Thanksgiving, it was not.  And even in the midst of all the craziness, I’m thankful I got to celebrate Thanksgiving with family, thankful for the opportunity to officiate my cousin’s wedding, thankful my father-in-law suprised everybody by coming home from India, thankful I got to ride for 10 hrs in a van with my dad, thankful I got to see my neice.   I am grateful I have a little girl who screams “My Daddy!” over and over…for a little boy who asks adorable, incessant questions…and for a wife who loves me for me.

Thanksgiving may be over and life may be nuts, but there’s always time to take pause and be grateful to a faithful, good God who always provides….always.