yuletide csi

In the matter of Merry Mistletoe, Auburn, California, December 2007:

We arrived home late on the evening of Monday, December 10th to find that we had had a visitor. Who it was we don't know, but one "Merry Mistletoe" (if that is her real name) had left a package on our doorstep with tissue paper, a box of gingerbread and holiday fudge and an envelope with the words "The First Day of Christmas" on the outside. With nothing else to go on---no latent prints, unfamiliar handwriting and a sudden, irresistible appetite for gingerbread---we took the evidence into the kitchen, dipped into the tins (disregarding all Halloween wisdom about eating unwrapped candy from strangers) and dipped even further into a mystery for the ages.

Or for the Agee's, rather.

Sure enough, another package arrived each day for the next eleven, each filled with holiday cheer, tissue paper and intrigue. As the days ticked down and the gingerbread disappeared we were left with great questions:

Who is Merry Mistletoe? Will she bring more gingerbread? Just how many maids were there a-milking again?

And now Day 12 has come and gone and still we don't know the identity of our strange, sly, sweets and savories supplying secret Santa. It looks as if this case might go cold---cold as a sudden winter snap.

Merry (if that is your real name), if you're reading this: Who are you, is there a Santa Claus and please, send more gingerbread.

collagi

One of the things we haven't taken care of yet with our new apartment is getting internet. That's still a ways off. Or not. We'll see. And this blog is one of the foreseen and I'm sure deeply missed victims of this. But we've been just as busy, it being the holiday season and all. Here's a collagéd update.

Every year my extended family in the Auburn area celebrates Christmas together at the beginning of December in a huge progressive dinner. We open name gifts, see about half of everybody's houses and decked out halls. This year Chrissy's parents were in town to join in. It was great to have them chauffeur us around :-)

Right after Thanksgiving some good friends from high school invited us to go to a Christmas market (basically) in a nearby historic mining town (yes, I have described Auburn as an historic mining town---this is a different one---we're a dime a dozen up here). Here are Nancy and Elliot and my friend Melissa.

Whenever we go to download pictures from our camera it always seems that there are more pictures of me than of Chrissy, and in most of these pictures I am doing something ridiculous (if you can believe that). So in view of showing some of pictures in a way that preserves Chrissy's personal diginity, I've put some of the recent examples in some collages by themselves.

By the way, here's the first pictures of our new kitchen. We'll get some...er...less graphic photos of our place up soon. Promise.

thank you

Thank you, friends, for your emails, cards, comments, thoughts and prayers. It's been an unusual week, and one that surprised me with how good it was, good in that deep-down way, like that moment after you've been crying and then you laugh---a much deeper-down kind of laugh than usual---that kind of good.

I've written a lot about this past week, but that's not what we've decided to use this blog for.

But among the things that have made this an amazing week is this: though much of it has been about mourning our loss and much of it has been about celebrating her life, the strongest refrain this week has been about celebrating the life that we are to inherit in Christ, which Mom has seized a foretaste of ahead of us.

Peace be to you from the one who was, who is and who is to come---even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come.

hard news

For those of you who keep up with us through this blog, my mom passed away Sunday morning. She had open heart surgery three weeks ago and was recovering well, but her condition started to deteriorate a week ago, and she went home to be with Jesus early Sunday morning from the emergency room.

The funeral is this Thursday.

We're doing well, I think: we're crying when we're sad, we're laughing when it's funny, and we're sleeping at night. We appreciate your prayers.

Joel