Christmas

I have been so excited about writing this post and I have had ideas pouring into my mind constantly of what I will write about. Then every time I sit down to write I can never get it all done. I have more pictures I want to add and more I want to write about. I suppose all that matters is I finally finished my Christmas post for 2010.

Christmas is one of my favorite holidays but honestly, there isn't a holiday that I don't enjoy. I absolutely love holidays. With Christmas there are specific things I love, however. While I was sitting down thinking about all the things I love about Christmas I realized that I have a really long list. I then realized I am not going to be able to write about everything I love so I narrowed it down to less than a hundred things. Well, I better get started.

You can't have Christmas without Jesus which means a Nativity Christmas play is a must. I love our annual Christmas play at church, and I am so blessed to be able to be the one who is in charge of running the play and getting all these cute kids to do silly things on stage. It is an amazing feeling to watch lil ones put on a play about Jesus' birth and for them to understand a little better just how important His birth was. I wish I had a picture to show you from that night, but honestly I was just trying to survive. With being in charge of the play, the stress of hoping it all goes well, morning sickness, and extreme fatigue I didn't even think to snap a picture.

Now, if you were to ask Mr. G what my favorite thing about Christmas is, he would probably tell you....traffic. Now I don't know if it is my favorite thing, but I do love the traffic on Christmas.

This picture was taken December 23 and you can see the line of traffic in the left lane. (Sorry the picture is so dark - I tried to take a picture earlier in the day but I was driving then and it didn't work out very well. This picture was taken while Mr. G was driving and it turned out much better) You can tell by the picture that it was madness. People getting last minute gifts, trying to get all the groceries they would need for the next few days, and traveling to family's. The roads were a mess.

This picture was taken December 25 on our way home from all our Christmas festivities. Not a car in sight. I absolutely LOVE driving through town and only seeing a handful of cars knowing that everyone is at home with there families enjoying Christmas Day. It reminds me of what our country probably looked like every Sunday afternoon decades ago when restaurants and stores were closed for church. I wish Sundays still looked like this but I am very thankful that at least I can count on Christmas to bring me this joy.

Not every year we are blessed with a beautiful Christmas snow, but thankfully this year we were.

Again, this picture was taken in the car. I wasn't about to walk out in the snow and take a picture of our house just for my blog. So I waited until we drove past but unfortunately you see the water from our windshield in the picture.

This picture I took looking out our back door. You can kind of see that it was still snowing at this point and we ended up getting probably 2 to 3 inches in all. It was gorgeous.

Apparently, along with snow comes neighborly love. This man you see in the picture is our neighbor to the left of us and he takes care of us year round. I still found it amazing to see him out on Christmas morning clearing EVERYBODY'S drive way on our road. What a wonderful Christmas present to his neighbors and what a wonderful blessing he is to us. When Mr. G went over to tell him thank you for clearing our drive way, our neighbor said he didn't know what Mr. G was talking about. He went on to tell a story about seeing sleigh marks on his roof and that Santa must of cleared our driveway after he delivered all the presents. What a sweet man.

Now, as everybody knows, Christmas day would not be complete without the Christmas Story and I don't just mean the story of Jesus' birth. I am talking about the movie...does that make me a heathen? I hope not.

At my mom and dads house The Christmas Story will be played over and over again on Christmas Day. Mr. G knows every line by heart, which is not annoying at all. For me, I love this movie because it reminds me of what my dad was probably like at that age. It is a classic and will always be a family favorite at Christmas time.

Another joy of Christmas is making Christmas cookies for others. We have started the tradition of making Christmas cookies for our neighbors and this year we decided to make sugar cookies. I don't know why I keep writing "we" when Mr. G had no part in this except delivering, but I guess that was a hard job considering all the snow we had Christmas morning.

I used my mother-in-laws recipe which is absolutely delicious, but I realized at this point that I must've made the cookies a little thicker than I should have. Her cookies are never this thick....whoopsie! All that matters is that I am trying....right? Maybe if I had a little help.
Of course, Marley is too busy chasing his food around the house to help. Maybe it's not that I need help but that I am distracted by how cute Marley looks. Yep - that's gotta be it.


Well, now it is time to do the icing which is another favorite part of Christmas except this year I won't be sampling any. Usually I find an excuse to sample the icing but ever since I got pregnant I can't eat anything sweet because it will make me sick. There's always next year.

Mmmm....it does look yummy though and very festive. The only problem is I forgot to take a picture of the cookies when I was all done icing them. I wonder if that is because they actually didn't look all that good once I decorated them and I was a bit embarrassed. Nah, I'll just say it is because I forgot to take the picture.

And then there is the food and fellowship around the dinner table on Christmas.

Lucky for Mr. G and I we got to enjoy two Christmas meals. One meal took place on Christmas Eve at Mr. G's parent's house. We always go up to his parent's house on Christmas Eve to open presents, eat, and play games. A neat thing about Christmas next year at Mr. G's parents house is that there will be two lil ones crawling around. Mr. G's sister is also pregnant and is due just 6 weeks before me so next Christmas there will be a lot of pictures and a lot of spoiling since these will be the first Christmas with grand babies in the family.

In my family we always have a Christmas morning brunch. This usually happens around 11:00 and we will have an assortment of breakfast foods from french toast, to homemade cinnamon rolls, bacon, eggs, hash browns, pancakes, and more. It is amazing! This year while the grown ups were enjoying the meal one of my lil nieces continued to ask, "When are we going to open presents?" Everyone at the table took turns telling her, "Soon! We will open presents SOON." This wasn't setting well with the lil girl so I eventually sat her down and explained to her that this meal is like the grown up's present on Christmas morning. We like food that much. I thought I had gotten through to her just how important spending time eating this wonderful meal was when she turned and asked me, "Okay, but when are we going to open presents?"
I laughed and said, "Soon."

Now I must admit that I think one of the joys of Christmas is opening presents, but don't judge me just yet. I have always enjoyed getting new things and when I was a lil girl I couldn't wait to open presents on Christmas morning. Now days the joy comes from seeing others open presents on Christmas. I try so hard to find just the right gift for everyone and I get really excited to see if the others will be as excited about the gift as I hope they will be. It really is more about giving than receiving.




For example, Mr. G and I were excited to give his parents this Grandchildren picture frame because we know how pumped they are about being Grandparents for the first time. I have a feeling she will have those pictures filled up in no time once the grand babies start coming.


Now I must admit it was really neat to get presents that were going to be for our baby. Everything had to be either green or yellow since we still don't know the gender just yet, but it was still special.



Now, watching this lil guy on his first Christmas open presents was priceless. Wrapped up in his Nana's arms he was nothing but smiles especially when he got his hands on some wrapping paper. I know it made Nana's Christmas special too. It has been a lil while since she had a lil one that age and I know how much she enjoys being around her grandchildren and how much happiness she gets from seeing the joy on their face come Christmas morning. Maybe next year she will have our baby sitting in her arms opening presents. I can't wait to get a picture of that.

Young and old Christmas is always special. For my grandma Christmas is still bitter-sweet because grandpa isn't here to spend it with her. However, I don't think she thought about that much being completed surrounded by family all day. Thank God for family.

Now, here is the lil girl who kept asking, "When are we going to open presents." I was lucky to get her to pose for a picture in the middle of her unwrapping. I think she could've unwrapped presents all day long if we let her.


This sweet girl was just as excited, but she did have a bit of a problem this Christmas. You see, she lost her two front teeth just before Christmas which made her look even more cute, especially when she sang the song, "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth." The only problem was she didn't know how to smile without those two teeth. Gotta love it.


I think at Christmas time everyone should receive some kind of a gift, including the dogs. Last year we had Mickey at home and he absolutely loved Christmas. In fact, he even got a lil psycho about it, but this year we had Marley and he actually acted scared of Christmas.

Mr. G's mom and dad had gotten Marley a lil present so Mr. G opened it for him Christmas morning. Apparently, it has been a tradition for Mr. G's family.

This is Chloe down below, Mr. G's mom and dad's dog. This dog loves Christmas and knows that she will be getting a Christmas present. I think she sniffs all the presents under the Christmas tree to see which one is hers while nobody is looking. Her gift was a big tire for her to chew on, but unfortunately, Chloe isn't very lady like and had that toy chewed up in no time.

So I thought Marley would be the same way with Christmas as Mickey and Chloe.


I had gotten Marley a few treats that I thought he might like. It was very exciting as we both were waiting to see how Marley would react.


And it was not good at all. Marley wanted nothing to do with his gift, his treats, or any of the wrapping paper laying on the ground. Poor guy was scared to death.

At least he looked festive with his red and green handkerchief on. It took Marley 3 days to start eating his treats so apparently he liked them, he's just paranoid about Christmas. Weird.

Yogi, my mom and dad's dog is one who always loves Christmas, but not so much for the presents. He usually gets more table scraps after our big Christmas brunch, and this boy loves pancakes. If you look back at the picture of my family sitting around the dinner table for our Christmas brunch you will see Yogi about to get a hold of Dad's plate on the table. Luckily, Dad sat back down before Yogi could take a bite.



Here is Yogi with out two excited lil girls anxiously waiting to open their presents.


Christmas is also about having fun and enjoying the day, and there is nobody who does that better than my in-laws. One minute they may be sitting and opening presents like everyone else....




And the next minute.....well....

What can I say....


I was sad to see Christmas end but it was a wonderful day filled with all of the things that make it special. It starts with Jesus, my Savior, who was born so that eternity can be spent with Him in Heaven. But until that day when we are all in Heaven God has blessed me with a wonderful family to spend my life with and to spend special days like Christmas with.