25 December 2015

Oh how I love Christmas time. I love the lights, the musics, the giving, the snow, the service, the visits, the nativities, some of the goodies, the feast, and the together time. I LOVE the season of Christmas. Of course there is a great love for Christmas day too. It’s such an exciting time with presents to open and presents to give. And then the rest of the day, to visit people, to play with your new toys, to hang out. I love this joyful time of year. For me, Christmastime has always been joyful, though it isn’t always that way for everyone, and I hope everyone can find peace and joy in Christ, despite their very difficult circumstances.

Christopher and I stayed up till 2 am on Christmas Eve finishing wrapping our presents for each other, which meant we wouldn’t be waking up and 5 am and running to the living room to see what Santa brought, like we do when we’re kids. We woke up about 9, got ready, and took Edelweiss for her walk. There was snow on the ground and it was starting to rain. Edel ran back and forth through the crunchy snow while Chris launched her ball for her. While we walked, I read Luke 2, the Christmas story. How wonderful that we have those records of the savior’s birth. I also have this record of when I went to Bethlehem seven years ago. What magic.

We came home from our walk and sat by the tree with all our gifts from Santa and loved ones, mostly from each other. Chris did great at thinking of what I likened what’s important to me in gift giving this year. I think we both did a good job at giving some fun and meaningful gifts.

I spent a long time painting a sign/picture for Chris’s office, and he liked that a lot. And for me, he got some great photos from our sealing printed on wood. They look excellent. We don’t have any pictures printed from our sealing a year ago, so those will be so nice to display on the walls of our home, because it was a pretty significant and special day for us. During our present opening, we all had lots of pictures and messages going back and forth in the family text. This picture of Brady was the highlight of that for me.

After present opening and me eating a bunch of chocolate chip cinnamon rolls I made (it’s tradition!), we went to my sister Holly’s house and ate Christmas Eve dinner leftovers and opened a few presents with them. Holly gave me a cute, little, thoughtful, owl vase, and Natalie give us some stick people ornaments she made of me, Chris, and a baby. No, we’re not pregnant, but I’m excited to be!

Oh! Before we went to Holly’s, we went to Gloria Corey’s house and visited with her. She’s recently widowed and is such a sweet and tiny Alaskan woman. We came back home in the afternoon and played with our new toys. :) Chris/Santa got himself an xbox, so he can play Star Wars Battlefront with his little brother and nephew, and for other reasons, like he likes it. I tried playing but an xbox controller is hard to use! Bring back the old school Nintendo controllers, world!

In the evening, our friend Richard and his daughter Emily came over and hung out for the rest of the night. We ate more Christmas Eve dinner leftovers and fudge and such, and played some games. I love playing games. What a wonderful way to spend time with people, along with eating, o’ course. We watched some good youtube videos too. It’s always nice to have a tribe to pass time with!

OH! And I got a bunch of cat stuff, my favorite being a shirt with a printed cat popping out of a fake pocket, soon to be a real pocket. And we’re taking care of like, 8 cats right now. We’ve got our current two, and we’re cat sitting one here with us. And we’re taking care of the neighbors three cats for a few days, just feeding and petting them. And my mom is gone and she has my sister’s two cats at her house. They just need food and love and their litter box cleaned. Anyway, cats cats cats.