Full Bloom, Full Blown: A Merry Little Christmas

Monday, December 28, 2009

A Merry Little Christmas

It has been such a fun and relaxing weekend. Somehow we eliminated most of the stresses of the holiday and yet when Marg asked me what we cut out to do that I couldn't really put my finger on it. Maybe it was an attitude more than anything else, maybe a little more organization, maybe having a few days here and there to focus on thinking through things while the twins were at school, I'm not sure. But I do know that for the first time in as long as I can remember we did almost everything that I wanted to do during the season and I was done wrapping gifts at 6:00 PM on Christmas Eve. I still ended up staying awake until 3:00 writing "stocking letters" to my family, but there was no stress or pressure, just a bit of weariness. I even begged my children not to stay up for the traditional "all night kids party in the playroom" and they reluctantly listened and most were down by 1:00AM.

It was fun to get together as extended family the next morning for Emma's baptism and visiting at Nash's and we are looking forward to an extended family racquetball night at Ben and Renee's on Monday night. I'm happily anticipating this next week of having my children home and no homework to check and also looking forward to celebrating the New Year.

Our Gingerbread House in Progress the Monday night before Christmas

"All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth"

(Lily top photo--Sophie bottom)

The Girls on Christmas Morning

Family Time

The updated teen room (they'd fit right in in the Phillipines...color, color, COLOR!)

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"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived." (Marjorie Pay Hinckley)

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human being s should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." (Howard Zinn)

“God made the world for the delight of human beings--if we would see His goodness everywhere, His concern for us, His awareness of our needs: the phone call we’ve waited for, the ride we are offered, the letter in the mail, just the little things He does for us throughout the day. As we remember and notice His love for us, we just begin to fall in love with Him because He is so busy with us--you just can’t resist Him. I believe there’s no such thing as luck in life, it’s God’s love, it’s His.” (Mother Teresa)

“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing the things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” (C.S. Lewis)

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Monday, December 28, 2009

A Merry Little Christmas

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