Blog Sabbatical-haha

Talk about a blog sabbatical....sorry! Well, Christmas was great. It's always a challenge to make it special with this many children. The kids are great. They really do appreciate whatever we do for them. They truly love to give, also, and it makes them so happy to give each other gifts. We had our Homecoming Christmas program at church on the Saturday before Christmas. It was very nice and well attended. And we had a Christmas Eve Candlelight service. It was very beautiful. It was icy and snowy but we had several visitors to come out. We met a nice family who came back to church again this Sunday. We had some instrument challenges that night, which was very weird. The digital piano pedal quit working which made for a very funny sound. Abbey was going to play a prelude (her first piano solo) but couldn't because of it. Then, during my solo-O Holy Night-one of Chris's guitar strings hit the music stand and went way out of tune. At first, he thought it broke. He tried to tune it but eventually gave up and I finished it accapella. But, somehow, we muddled through. We came home, ate pizza and acted out our traditional family Christmas Eve Nativity story. Chris is alwasys Joseph. This year Liberty was Mary. Judah was a donkey. Adam and Abbey were shepherds. Sam and Jesse were wisemen. Gracie was an angel and, as always, I was the narrator. Honestly, this year I just wanted to skip the nativity story. I know that's terrible. Life is so busy and you really have work to keep your focus on the priorities. I really want the littles to have meaningful memories, too. It was easier when I was younger and more motivated-youthful zeal, haha. But, I don't regret it. To see their little faces as the story becomes real to them... I never want to lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas. It is so easy to let everything crowd Him out, but so wrong.
So here we are on the back side of Christmas. Lots of cleaning, taking down decorations and packing them away for another year, vacuuming up pine needles and moving the furniture back into place. Happy New Year everyone!
Linda