Merry Christmas!

    This was our family room last night, with the stockings ready and the gifts under the tree.  In many families, the mother does most of the gift purchasing.  Thankfully for me, Kevin does much of the gift purchasing as I'm not particularly good at it.  He gets all the stocking stuffers and manages the all important video and computer games.

Anyway, look at that. Clean, fresh, lovely, organized.

Oh, and do you see the blankets below the stockings?

            Blankets are a huge hit. The older 7 each got to pick out a new one.  There can apparently never be enough snuggly warm blankets around here.

Unloading the stockings. Fun.

      We got Rose up around 7 a.m. and while that was late for her, she was obviously bewildered at all the activity and indeed seemed stunned. Usually it is just Mommy and Rose first thing in the morning, but today siblings were running all over.

  The gifts were popular.  We bought Daniel a play pizza set, which enthralled both him and Sarah and Rose.  There were also new Kid K'nex and new Duplos.

  And lots of new computer and video games. Like, 9 new games.

  Of course, the real meaning of the season is the birth of Jesus Christ.  But I know that when I was a child, it was really the gifts that were most exciting :-).  I don't have any problem with that. I hope and pray that we focus on the gift of Christ every day of our lives.  I have been reading the Christmas story to Sarah off and on for a few weeks out of a children's Bible, and they always show Baby Jesus wrapped in a purple cloth.  Being me, I've told her a couple of times that it was NOT purple.  Purple was extremely expensive as the dye had to be made out of a certain kind of snail.  Joseph and Mary were POOR.  Jesus was a baby born to a poor family.  It is amazing enough that Christ gave up the glory and power of Heaven, but He could have been born in a palace. And He went with a stable. Thank you, Lord Jesus.