Christmas has once again come and gone leaving our pocketbooks empty, but our hearts full. For me Christmas is not all about presents, but rather showing my kids what love is all about. First and foremost, the love of God at its best sending his precious son.  Second the love of family and friends all coming together to spend time  just being together.  And the love we show to others through giving.  

This year, as a family we baked a host of goodies and made plates of treats and cards to take to all of our neighbors.  The kids were so excited to knock on their doors and give them what we had made.  They wanted to sing Christmas carols for all the folks in our cul-de-sac.  Curiously Logan kept referring to this as "hunting".  I don't know why he couldn't remember "caroling" but it made me smile each time he told people we went hunting in our neighborhood so what do you do?!  

We always go overboard with gifts at Christmas.  I should say I always go overboard because Justin always tells me we have enough and I just keep seeing things I know that so and so would love.  Although it is always nice to receive gifts, I find my real joy in giving them, and Christmas gives me reason to give in full force.  I want my kids to find their joy in giving too, even when there isn't a lot of money to spend.  That being said, this year I took the boys to the dollar store and let them buy gifts for their friends.  They were so excited to pick things out.  Kameron paying special attention to get things for each friend that he knew they would like, Logan picking for his friends what he would like.  But it was a teachable moment, and I was blessed by their generosity wanting to spend their own money on gifts for their friends and not even asking me to pay for it.  They brought their money out of their piggybanks and stayed within their budget (I should learn from them right?)  They couldn't wait to give out their presents, they stayed up late to wrap everything and distributed them on the last day of school. 

They came home full of stories about how much the friends liked the gifts and what they said.

The holiday season is always super busy for us what with school and church programs, the actual holidays, and Justin working to produce the Sate Youth Conference.  We were blessed to be able to share our time with both sides of the family this year.  I cannot imagine Christmas without our extended families.

We wish everyone many blessings in the year to come and hope to see you all when the opportunity arises!

God Bless!