Christmas - with no pictures

Some highlights of our Christmas Season include:

Serving others in the community
Doing crafts and playing games with each other
Being unexpectedly surprised by Santa and his helpers in different ways
Having my mother and father come for the weekend
Creating new traditions of Chinese dinner on Christmas Eve and a seafood feast on Christmas day
Enjoying old traditions of handing out treats and my hand towels
Going to church and having the services only be 45 minutes long - which most of the time was special musical numbers. Simply beautiful!
Just being together - all of us.

Next year will be different. Popeye won't be here to enjoy Christmas with us. I hope he'll be in an area where we can Skype with him, though. And I hope we made enough memories this year that the kids will be able to look back on this time with their father to pull them through the tough times ahead. (He'll be deployed in June.)

So while I've been reading your blogs of the memories you've made with your kids and the joyous celebrations you've had, I hope that your children appreciate all that you do for them to make Christmas so special.  Our plan for next year is to continue to make these memories that will last a life time!  To live as the Savior lived, to serve those around us and reach out to those in need - that's what I was trying to do with the kids this year. And for the most part, I think they got it.

Merry Christmas blog friends & family! May the joy of this Christmas season continue in your heart through the rest of this year and into the new!