Christmas Eve

What joy fills my heart to have all my precious children home for Christmas this year. I don't take this for granted. We never know what a day will bring and having them home is truly a gift I cherish.

For the last 16 years, we have had a Christmas tradition of reading through The 25 Days of Christmas~ An Advent Celebration for the Entire Family by Rebecca Hayford Bauer. We read the book, light candles (blowing out the candles is always a huge hit with the younger folks), sing Christmas carols and pray. Along with this tradition, a few years back we added reading through the different advent stories by Arnold Ytreeide (Bartholomew's Passage has been the book for this year) and a special handmade wall hanging advent calendar. The children look forward to these traditions with joy.

This year, Emma and Parker spearheaded a new family tradition. After having so much fun participating in our annual home church fellowship tradition of the children's retelling of the Christmas story (you can see photos of this year's celebration here), they decided that it would be fun to surprise their mama (how sweet!) with their own production. So following our traditional Christmas Eve dinner (clam chowder by candlelight), I received a memorable blessing from my children.

They enlisted their dad to read the Christmas story from the Bible as they acted it out...
There were the shepherds and the angel...Joseph and Mary with their treasured new son, baby Jesus...And the wise men (who had double roles due to the lack of available participants) bearing gifts...It was delightful! What a wonderful surprise! Parker is already talking about how they can make improvements for next year's production.

Remembering that JESUS is the true reason for this season, we pray that you will seek Him and receive His precious gift to us all.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!