Celebration Day.....

"....do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" - which means, "God with us." When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.....

WOW...all that, all those years ago. And all for us. So that we could be saved from our sins even before we were born to commit them. It has all been planned out for us and our roads paved yet we still find things to gripe and complain about all the time. Small things that we find each day to find fault with when our Heavenly Father went to the cross and died, an innocent man, so that each of us could have eternal life one day in Heaven. Makes you just have one of those WOW moments doesn't it? This Christmas season as we were rushing around trying to pack up and load things up and seemingly pack everything we own but the kitchen sink to bring with us I was thinking, WHY? Why has it become so important to materialize and commercialize this holiday so much when the real reason for it isn't the presents that are waiting on that morning, or the amount of snow that is on the ground or making sure that you are off of work on that one specific day of the year, but really shouldn't we be celebrating the birth of Christ every single day of the year and not just around the Christmas season? And shouldn't we really be finding other ways to honor him than beating people to get the last of that one particular "hot item" of the Christmas season only to sell it on Ebay for a much higher price just to make a few dollars? It seems that we have all so easily lost sight of the real meaning of the holiday season when he is right there in front of us everyday yet he never loses sight of us. Another reason that he is such an amazing and great God.
I had an amazing holiday season getting to spend it in Kentucky with all of my family. I was able to see everyone. Even Jean, Chris and Tabitha were in from Arizona and that was awesome. We divided our time between Mom and Dad's, Jennifer and Tim's and Rick and Pam's and it worked out just great for us. We appreciated everyone's hospitality to us and especially appreciated Jennifer, Tim and the kids for keeping Sis at the house during our stay in. I know that was a rather "large" house guest but we appreciated it very much! We truly loved Christmas day. We spent the day at the club house so that there was plenty of space to spread out and we just had time to open gifts, eat, play, visit and just relax. After, as everyone prepared to head home, we went back over to Mom's and unfortunately Chad had to head back home to Tennessee to work for a couple days. I stayed back with Mom and the boys and he left around 7pm to get on the road. He made it home safe and sound and we all got to bed with visions of sugarplums still dancing in our heads....

It was a wonderful day with a wonderful family and as usual many more beautiful memories were made.....

Love to you all and til next time-