Holidays

I am FINALLY updating!! Well sort of, more or less rambling. I don't have many updates of what's gone on with us. Just what's going on in my head. You see...the month of November and December are my favorite months of the year. Not only do I love the crisp cool air of fall and the cold wet "winter days" of Texas. I love the seasons! I love Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

I, like most people, have those great memories of being on the way to my Aunts house for Thanksgiving lunch or heading out to my grandparents farm to an evening pot of gumbo. I was always so excited to see my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. I have such sweet memories as we would sit at the kid table and listen to my brother as he attempted to make us all laugh. His goal was to once again make my cousin Stephen spew something out of his nose!  

As for Christmas there were many memories made around the piano singing songs of praise and celebration. The old hymns sung with my family and all their harmonies. Or being at the farm wondering what crazy goose hunt my Pepaw would put us up to this year so we could enjoy our christmas present.

My all time favorite memories were of two things we did at our own house growing up. 

#2: Putting up and decorating the tree. We usually put it up the day after thanksgiving. It was always a family affair, everyone helped. Even the person who would sit on the couch and tell us "a little to the left". That was usually dad! We would listen to Christmas music and look at all the ornaments as we put them up, talking about all their stories of where they came from. 

#1: Every Christmas morning before we opened presents one of us would read the story of Christ birth, out of the first few chapters of Luke. I read it my last Christmas before I got married and barely made it through it without crying like a baby, knowing it was my last turn to read it at home!!!

Traditions are neat things to have, we haven't started many yet. But these are two that I wish to continue in our family. My prayer for my boys is that they will not get caught up in the "Christmas" of this day and age. But that their hearts would be so wrapped up in the thought of God coming to this earth that they wouldn't care about presents. We don't do Santa. I know my child will be the kid at school that ruins it for some sweet innocent child- "Santa's not real!!" 

But here's the truth of it for us, we don't want ANYTHING to take away from what it's really about. So much so that we're praying about doing gifts at all and how to go about doing them if we do. I LOVE to give gifts and want to see my children learn to give with the right heart but I also want them to give and not expect anything in return.

In all the craziness that has gone on in these few short weeks and the ones to come, I still cannot get my little mind to understand it.... Emmanuel "God with us"! I don't fully understand it but I am so thankful He was and is and is to come!