Christmas

Well, I would have a bunch of pictures to put in this post, but Randy accidentally deleted ALL the pictures I took of Christmas. He thought he had downloaded them to the computer and then he deleted them from the camera. Poor thing, I think he was as upset as I was. Oh well, we have the pictures in our minds!

They boys had a wonderful Christmas. We don't do Santa at our house, but we've started our own tradition where Randy & I give the boys each 3 gifts to symbolize the 3 gifts the wise men gave Jesus. They get more presents from family, so believe me, they're not missing out on anything.

This year a friend of mine told me about The Jesse Tree. She made us one and we started it the day after Thanksgiving. You make a huge Christmas tree out of felt material and then in a notebook, you have bible stories that lead to the birth of Christ, with a symbol for each story. You read one story a day until Christmas and put that symbol on the tree. We had a great time reading all the stories. Jeremiah couldn't sit still long enough to read through a story, but he enjoyed putting the symbols on the tree. I will take another completed picture and upload it later. Here's a link that tells how to make the tree.

http://www.crivoice.org/jesse.html

My family's first Christmas with Mom was different. We just had snack foods and did a chinese gift exchange for the adults. We normally draw names since there are so many of us, but we wanted to do something fun this year...to take our minds off Mom not being there, I suppose.

I think my dad has the most fun of all. He had all the grandchildren gather around him. For those that don't know my dad, this is not like him at all. I think they all thought he was gonna give them a "talking to" about being thankful or something. Then, he took out his wallet and handled out $10 bills to each child. You should've seen their eyes. It was like they had won the lottery or something. It was so much fun. None of us knew he was gonna do that and didn't even expect him to do anything. Of course, the money was burning holes in our boys' pockets, but we made them wait and decide if they wanted to save it for something really special or find something now. They chose to go to WalMart and buy more Hot Wheels cars. I think we've got some cars fanatics on our hands. We're gonna need a separate room for all the cars they've collected.

We had the boys clean their toy box and pick items they would like to donate to the Christian charity store. At first, it was hard for them to let go of their stuff, but we reminded them that there are children out there that don't have 1 Hot Wheels car, much less the dozens they have. They're beginning to get it.

Well, another Christmas is behind us and the hope for a brighter new year is upon us. We pray that all our loved ones know how much we love them and appreciate the support they've given us during the past couple of years. We honestly don't know what we would've done with you in our lives.

Happy New Year!!