Dear Family, First of all, I want to wish all of you the best of holidays. It has been wonderful to find all of you and to add you to my family. It has been a most abundant year for that. I want to tell all of you of my memories of an Owen County Christmas. I was born and raised in Lexington, but on Christmas we always went "home". After getting up very early and opening presents, it was time to get ready and go to "Mama's". We would get dressed up for that 1 and a half hour drive. Usually it was cold, but no snow to remember. I would be dressed up in my coat and matching leggings. For those "kids" who don't remember, leggings were long tight pants to match your coat that zipped up at the legs to keep you warm. We would then drive to my grandmother's in Sparta. Then we would go to my great aunt and uncle's out on Lewis Lane in Owen Co. The old house had frame on the outside, but it was an old log house with a fireplace, pot bellied stove, and in the kitchen a warm morning stove. There was enough food to feed an army. And usually enough family to make up a small army. The children were fed in the kitchen, to get them out of the way. Then the men would all sit down and eat with the women feeding and visiting at the same time. Then the women would eat after the men, usually sitting in their husband's place. While the women ate, the men would discuss politics, farm prices, and the usual "men talk". The women would sit for quite a while discussing the children, latest fashions, and gossip. The kids (what few of us there were) would be off and running "like wild Indians". Dishes were done and the women would join the men. This was as much a tradition as Christmas. When I was 12 we moved to Florida. It was very hard on me, to pick up and leave all of the kids that I had known all of my life. I still keep in touch with some of them. But move, we did. When I was 14 we went home to Ky. for Christmas. When I was asked what I wanted for Christmas, I told my parents that all I wanted was to see it snow. I had never remembered seeing it snow for Christmas. You should have heard what my Dad said!!!!! None of it repeatable on the net, to say the least. After all, we had no snow tires or chains. No problem until we got to Lexington. Then it started to snow. By the time we got halfway between Frankfort and Owenton, you could hardly see. And guess who got the blame for it? I think one of the most beautiful sites I remember was going down the hills to go into Sparta when the old road was there. It was a winding, twisting drive, but the trees were so heavy with snow that it looked like an ice cave. It was beautiful. And I can see it as if it happened just yesterday. I got to sleep by the fireplace the whole time we were there. And the snow stayed on the ground the whole trip. And the family tradition of dinner at my great aunt's continuted just as if we had never been gone. Two years later my aunt, uncle, and grandmother moved to Florida. I have not been back for a Christmas since. And all of the family except for my aunt, mother, and the kids are gone. But there has never been a Christmas that goes by that I don't relive in my mind and my heart the Christmases in Owen Co. God Bless and Merry Christmas to us all. Love, Judy Estes Lawrence