This holiday season was much different for me than of every year past. This was the first holiday season with out my parents around. (Except for when I was at Ricks.) It was a different vibe around here, getting everything planned with Lori instead of mom for the new way Christmas Eve would be held....but all in all it was a great night. Most every one in the family came, we did miss a couple and we were sad...but it was their decisions.
We had 22 people here that evening, it was a house full of family and some friends too. It was great food, family and fun! (and thanks Lori for making your best crinkle cookies ever!!) We were going to play games, but the night passed by really fast. We did record a song for mom and dad in TN, it may not have been pretty, but we had fun gathering around and singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". I hope they enjoyed it as much as we did recording!
I decided I would do a short Christmas message for this was the reason for the gathering. I think it went well, it was a lesson I did for my YW. I gave all my siblings families a white stocking to put their gift to our Savior in. It would be something that we wanted to improve in our life, maybe be more forgiving, or to do more service, it would be a gift of the heart. The next year, you would pull out the paper that you wrote the previous year and re-read what your gift was to the Savior....I wanted to start a new tradition...lets see how that works.
Another first for us, was this was Korey's first Christmas morning that he was at work. Getting the day shift his MANY positives, more positives than negatives, but holidays will pay the price with Korey being with us. So our traditional Christmas brunch had a different vibe. We still invited the missionaries over and had a good time, but I felt sad at the same time. Talk to Korey about this and he will tell you a different point of view. He is so grateful for the shift that he works now, he is willing to sacrifice those holidays that he will not be around.
Christmas morning of course is not early around here at all. My boys NEVER wake up early. They are up all night and sleep all day kind of boys! All of them. In fact lil Korey and Jordan got up before Jacob and they went in and told him that Santa had come. He sat straight up and said, "oh yeah". Up they came, we had to do re-take of the photo because my camera was not ready.
They opened their stockings and then moved onto the gifts. Jacob was really excited to get his own hand held game system, he had been asking for a DS but I told him he had to show me he would be responsible so he got a Game Boy Advance SP and some games for that....and a couple of games for the Wii...he was really happy about those...but when he opened his crayon, coloring pencil activity kit, he was like, oh.....ok....and put it down, I wanted to capture that on camera...it was priceless....The older two boys got the PSP's that they wanted with a couple of games and a movie for it. Pretty much that was it. Easy shopping! They were VERY grateful for their gifts and kept saying how thankful they were....that made me happy that they showed such gratitude.
Korey and I exchanged stockings when he got home....typical stuff in them....we are saving money so we did not exchange gifts. He thought it was because we were going to TN to see mom and dad, but I really wanted to save for his surprise!
Christmas was a long day....I started to prepare dinner, but Korey insisted when he got home not to worry about it with having TONS of left overs from the Christmas Eve party. I could hardly keep my eyes open with having 3 hours of sleep because of my niece Michelle kept me up all night talking about her wonderful Anatomy teacher, and dead people and all sorts for things....so by evening I was falling asleep in the chair and was willing to go to bed before the kids and suffer the consequences of the messy house in the morning. And suffer I did....but I am TRYING to learn not to sweat the small stuff....
I am grateful for my family and my husband who is willing to go out and work holidays. To put himself in harms way for us daily and act as if it is no big deal. (I have such a crazy story of a woman on Christmas Day who rammed his police car, head on, intentionally....but that is a different post sometime.) I love my hero that wears a badge!
