3. Two of the three orchids my uncle sent me for my birthday four years ago are still alive, and, when I left for the holidays, there were buds on both. The nicest part of returning to work on Tuesday was discovering two of the buds on the yellow orchid had blossomed:<\/p>\n
![\"Orchid\"](\"https:\/\/c6.staticflickr.com\/1\/535\/31325278053_e22f05c92f.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nMy uncle died three years ago this month, and I like to think the orchids blooming around Christmas — which he loved and for which he always provided a goodie bag to us, complete with scratch-off lottery tickets — are his way of making sure I have a nice holiday. <\/p>\n
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three beautiful things from the transition between 2016 and 2017: 1. I did not get the majority of my Christmas cards out before the 25th, as I’d hoped, but finished them instead in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, which I justified as being part of the Twelve Days of Christmas and therefore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-three-beautiful-things"],"yoast_head":"\n