Our Christmas Festivities!

I look forward to Christmas all year. I love the decorating, the special time spent with friends baking and exchanging cookies, ALL the eating, going to our favorite neighborhood to look at Christmas lights and doing the walk-thru Bethlehem, but most of all I really enjoy our Christmas Eve celebration with our family. All of our family, which includes my sisters and their families, Ty's parents, my mom and George, my Dad and Lin, and Granny all go to the Christmas Eve service at our church and then we head back to our house. We eat Mexican Food which has been a tradition since I was a kid, we sing Christmas carols around the fire pit, we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and eat Birthday cake, and of course we throw reindeer food out on the lawn so Rudolph doesn't skip our house. For the past two years we've actually seen Rudolph's red nose guiding Santa's sleigh in the sky. It's been quite a thrill for the kids :) We have lots of fun watching the kids sing and dance and just look forward to what Santa will have waiting for them in the morning. We always make sure the kids remember why we celebrate this special holiday though.

This year was a little tough because it was the first Christmas without my Papa. We were thrilled that Granny came up and she actually spent the night at my sister's house so that she could wake up with the kiddos Christmas morning. My mom made some pillows for all the kids with some of my papa's jeans and they loved them. Actually, it ended up being one of Maclaine's favorite gifts. After my papa died in April I took all of his shirts knowing that one day I wanted to make a quilt with them. It took me quite awhile before I could even think about cutting them up but I really wanted to make a quilt for my granny and my mom for Christmas so I started sewing away. It was bittersweet. I miss my Papa terribly and shed some tears as I was going through the process but I loved looking at his shirts all sewn together knowing that my Granny and Mom would be able to wrap a little piece of my Papa around them. My Granny says she wraps herself up in it in the evenings...it makes it all worth it to know that.

I hope our children will have these memories locked away in their little heads as I do of my childhood and all the special things my parents and grandparents did to make it so magical for us.