"Three Kings came riding from far away..."

The Three Kings Christmas Poem

Three Kings came riding from far away,
Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar;
Three Wise Men out of the East were they,
And they traveled by night and they slept by day,
For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star.

~ an excerpt, by; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

By the actual January 6th date of Epiphany, the three wise men had already been journeying around our home all month long, and were all quite ready to settle down right smack in the center of the kitchen table.

Well, that's the story for these three wise men anyway. We have several other "three magi, or three wise men" sets you know, so our home tends to become a bright star highway, with trios of wise men all crisscrossing paths in search of the newborn King, Jesus. :)

Gifts were quickly wrapped because at last minute, mostly due to utter distraction of having a house filled with out of town guests, and lots of hubbub for most of the weekend, I could not for the life of me, find any scotch tape anywhere, none appeared to be leftover from our Christmas wrapping!

I guess the substituted masking tape had to do, and since no one was expecting gifts this year, there they were, surprising each one of them at their dinner place. Nothing fancy to be sure, just sweet with loads of gratitude for being blessed with them.

My husband assured me he wanted to prepare dinner in the kitchen during the afternoon (secret husband recipe!), so I was pleasantly surprised to be able to enjoy a lovely Sunday afternoon nap, something I very rarely do myself. 

I woke up from my dreamy little slumber, just in time to join him for his final dinner prep of plating the food. Gee, that was just perfect timing.

Big bonus; everyone living here was at home for dinner this night, not a regular thing anymore with shift workers amongst us. A big yay for this!

20 + C + M + B + 13

And with chalk specially blessed for this Epiphany tradition, we marked the first letters of the three wise men's names (Caspar (some still use Gaspar), Melchior, and Baltasar), and the current year's date (2013) over our doorways, as a witness of their faith and protection against evil.