This year, with Christmas being on Sunday . . . it kinda threw us off. Well, it threw ME off anyway. I was really looking forward to worshipping on Christmas morning with the Church, but due to my lack of planning and foresight, things got very busy and needless to say I was a bit too weary and pre-occupied to enjoy the morning as much as I had anticipated.
Christmas Eve we enjoyed going over to my sister’s house. We were a tad bit late getting out of the door due to some “surprise” carolers. How fun!! (Thank you, Bartosch family!)
I LOVE going to my sister’s house at Christmas time! She got all of the “fine taste” and “decorating” genes!
We had a wonderful time watching Christmas movies and eating a prime rib dinner and opening gifts together.
My mom and Gail bought Jonathan a real robot. He was thrilled! We’ve already programmed one “mission” and I’m thinking this will be a GREAT school activity as we program together more missions. He’ll be able to do it on his own in no time!
They bought David a really high-tech sound board of some sort. You’ll have to ask him what it’s called. But it is right up his alley.
Here’s some photos I was saving for another post, but it will give you an idea of what it is (I think he wired it to record sounds when these photos were being taken):
My mom and sister bought the girls a REAL sewing machine and sewing baskets with supplies. And they’ve used them already (I WILL save those photos for another post).
We all went in and bought my mom a Kindle. She’d been wanting one and it was fun to be able to give her one this year.
My sister got a knife block and Jonathan was glad to help her fit in all of her knives.
Before we left, the kids each read their Christmas story or poem that they had written. We have begun to keep a folder of their “Christmas writings” each year. I give them an assignment (some years it’s more open-ended than others, it just depends.)
Since the next day was Christmas and we were going to church, we decided to just open up the rest of the presents from each other when we got home. We left my sister’s about 9:30 and had a sweet time of expressing our love and thankfulness to each other. Jonathan wrapped up some of his toys to give to Annie and Annie wrote poems for each of us. Those were some of the sweetest gifts to me!
We had some surprise guests stop by “for just a visit” and they bore gifts that blew our family away. The goodness of God to us through them rendered us speechless!
Hmmm . . .I hadn’t intended for this to be a post about “all we got”. To be honest, that is such a small part of our Christmas’s. But it is a part. We give to those in our lives who have blessed us and who have been used by God throughout the year to teach us about what it means to be a friend and about how to love. We give sometimes “big”, and sometimes it’s just a “love note” or handmade item. It flows out of a heart of gratefulness for all that we’ve been given in Christ and the love that has been poured out to us from a faithful heavenly Father.
Well, Christmas Eve ended late for us . . . but Sunday morning dawned glorious!
Part two coming . . .
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