Christmas 2008

I love Christmas. I sometimes struggle with it, but I love it. My struggle this year was not having the where-with-all to buy Christmas gifts for the family, which bugged me a great deal. After all that is what Christmas is all about, right? How else will our kids know just how much they are loved by their parents? I mean surely a Barbie has to exude love for sure.

Well this year the best gift of all of having all of our kiddos home with us. A few gifts were handed out. Handmade, home made gifts. Things that didn't move or have sound, weren't digital but were a hundred times better.

How bout a giant pinata in shape of a star? Filled with candy. That was Tiera's gift from her cousins. No batteries needed just a length of rope, a step ladder, something long to whack it with, a blindfold and uncle Aaron standing on the stepladder providing the swing action. Poppy and Lorren on hand recording it all on video while the girls and Nanny provided the whacking, even Mona displayed her ninja/nacho libre skillz. It was a sight to behold. In the cheering section was Tobie and Carlos and "LilLos" providing the cheering action. We laughed.... alot. Which is really good for the soul.

Or how bout the beautiful gifts Tiera picked out for each and every one of her family members. She really has great taste.

Or the amazing handmade journal Lorren made for me. Each page hand painted and included old cards from the past. Can't forget the awesome gift cards. They are always a blessing. Thank you Tobie and Carlos. We loved using our Cracker Barrel gift card.

Food played a huge part in our celebrating starting with a Christmas Eve get together at Tobie and Carlos' house. We started this tradition several years ago and it has become very special to all of us. We made three kinds of chicken wings, potato salad, tomato/corn salad, fruit salad, spinach dip and chips.

For Christmas day we had ham, green beans casserole, sweet potatoes/ marshmallow topping and Galore salad. Lorren later made chili. Yum Yum Yum. Mandy stopped by that evening, Mona and the girls made S'mores, which was a event. Later Mona pulled out a board game and the rest of the evening was spent comparing Apples to Apples. Well most of us, Ron, Tobie and I watched TV in Ben's room.

I even recieved phone calls from my brothers whom I haven't heard from in years and one of them stop by the house with his wife and visited for awhile.

On Sunday Ron and I drove down to where my mom lives and spent some time with her.
This was a really nice Christmas. Thank you Jesus.

In the wise words of Timy Tim... "God bless us all" or something like that.