Remembering December

December has passed and along with it the wonderful Christmas season. It is hard for me to let go of the Christmas lights, music, and decorations. I wanted to leave our tree up until the end of January, but I got outvoted. With every nativity, ornament or Nutcracker that we put away, I cringed, thinking "Why can't this season last longer?" " Why don't we leave the nativity sets up all year long? After all we think of Jesus all year long, right?" This year, we have chosen one simple nativity to leave up the year round. It is a simple one piece ceramic of Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

Now that everything (well almost everything ) is packed up and put away, we have time to write about the highlights of our Christmas season.

Here is the story of our Christmas.

Start with a tree. This may not look like the most beautiful tree in the world, but it was beautiful in our eyes. We chose to put up a real tree this year, a Grand Fir. It smelled so good and lasted well.



Now, after dark and when all the house lights were dimmed, it took on a magical glow.



This year we put a new ornament on the tree - Pink Ballet Slippers in honor of Michelle.

We put up our nativity sets,

The kids decorated a Gingerbread house,

Made snowflakes for the doors,

and put up the wooden Nutcracker soldiers.

On Christmas Eve the family gathered. Our numbers total twelve these days, with our future son-in-law Brendon included. We enjoyed being together.

We opened a few gifts.

Some were special gifts. This is a memory quilt that Katie, Amy, Alli & Chris made using some of Michelle's old t-shirts. The older kids made two quilts, one for Dave and me and one for their mother, Debbie. Most of the t-shirts represent an event or group Michelle was involved in. Michelle was involved in so many things that there were plenty of t-shirts for two quilts. Click on the photo to enlarge it to see the individual panels.



This couple was hiding a special secret all evening long.


Later, after the others had left Amy and Seth came back in with another gift. In it was this picture frame. (scroll down)













YES! Amy and Seth are expecting a baby! That means that Dave will finally get to be a grandpa and I a grandma. Their expected arrival date is in early August. Hurray!