Christmas

Cody and Devan came into town on Friday night before Christmas. We ate a yummy dinner and then jumped on TRAX at Daybreak and headed downtown. We had a wonderful evening together!

Christmas Eve brings family, food, games, singing and acting out the Nativity. We were glad to have Gary's family in town from North Dakota to join us this year. A favorite time of mine is sitting around the piano singing Christmas songs with my mother playing. Camron played one of his recorder Christmas songs for us because he had the flu the day of his school program. After singing we always have the kids act out the Nativity. Well our young kids have grown up so we enlisted some grown-up help. Thanks to Todd and Christine for being good sports and being Mary and Joseph for us. Jory wrote a little program to go with the scripture reading which made the program extra nice.

Merry Christmas!!! We all felt that we were spoiled this year. Getting just we wanted. Funny enough, it was a very simple gift year. Everyone only got a few gifts, but they came with meaning, effort and love which made them perfect.

My favorite part of Christmas this year was spent on Skype. We waited (very impatiently) for over two hours for Jacob to skype with us. It was so WONDERFUL to see him and talk with him!!!!! He looked great. Glowing with sweat and very tan. He is doing well. It was just so great to see him laugh, see his new companion, and the sweet family that let them use their house and computer. We mentioned to him that an Aunt had given him $50 for Christmas and that we would put it in his account for him to buy what he needed. When we did that we could hear a big gasp in the background and talking. Jacob stopped talking with us to listen to them. He said that they were just shocked because to them that was A LOT of money. That really humbled me and reminded me just how truly blessed we are. We were also able to skype with Bret and BreeAnn several times Christmas day. They had a wonderful Christmas all by themselves. They missed being with family and we missed them a lot also. It just wasn't the same with some of our children missing, but we felt very lucky to be able to connect with them through Skype!