Friday, December 30, 2011

The Reason we celebrate

 The past month has been a month of celebrating the joyous birth of our Lord and Savior in so many ways.  Shortly after Thanksgiving we began decorating and planning and I decided to do something I hadn't done in a long time.  When the boys were little we had many friends with kids the same age and we had a Christmas party for all of the kids at our house. 
Many years later, I once again enjoyed planning a 
Happy Birthday Jesus party.
What a perfect way to combine the fun part of Christmas and the reason we truly celebrate by having Santa tell us the Christmas story and share with us why Jesus is better than Santa...
Santa comes but once a year 
and 
Jesus is with us all of the time when He lives in our heart.
The day after school was out we had a fun filled time of serving lunch at the Ronald McDonald House and then ventured next door to the hospital to take some pictures and enjoy the Christmas entertainment.
As the Christmas holidays grew closer,  I wished for one gift more than any other;
The gift of having all of my family together.
And that is exactly what I got and it couldn't have been any sweeter!
We spent Friday night with David's family, and Saturday night after our beautiful candlelight service we had our family dinner and gift exchange.  
Then Sunday morning we dug through stockings and saw what Santa left before going to church 
to sing Praises to THE ONE who came to this earth all because of
LOVE for YOU and for ME!
After church, we went to my mom's house to have lunch and fun with my Mom, Nannie 
and sister's families.  We seemed to string this celebration out for awhile, but it was so nice to really have time with each family and not feel rushed.  Soon, the gifts will be forgotten, but the time we spent together LOVING one another will always hold beautiful memories in our hearts.

 My family showered me with wonderful gifts,
and when mom says NO to a game for Christmas, 
I guess you can count on big brother to get it for you!
                                      I wasn't impressed, but it certainly made for many laughs.
 With legs as long as hers are getting, it was definitely time for a new bike,
 and anything zebra print will put a smile on her face!

Many more pictures to follow, but blogger is not allowing me to upload anymore tonight!  It might have something to do with the late hour, but if any of my blogger friends have ideas on how to upload photos a little quicker please let me know!  They seem to be taking forever to upload!