Christmas Standouts

When I think about the Christmases of my childhood, there are a handful of memories that always come to mind. Hanging the stocking with my name glued on in felt, putting silver icicles on the tree and setting up the manger scene with half a dozen sheep who only had three legs (it was ancient even when I was a kid). There was also the gigantic Santa we put on our front porch. No one else in the neighborhood had one, so of course, I thought we were pretty cool. Now it would be considered tacky, but I still have very fond memories of that Santa.


With my own children, it's interesting to see the parts of Christmas that stand out for them. For Luke, it has been the song Angels We Have Heard On High. He is obsessed with that song and sings it constantly. When he sleeps, we put his CD player on repeat so we don't have to go in there every three minutes and turn it back on.

Max has been obsessed with the Nativity. Merk and I collect Nativity scenes so we have about 15 of them set up this time of year. In early December, I put one in each of the boy's rooms. Max now has four in his room. He would have more, but I had to put them out of reach. It took me awhile to figure it out, but he was taking figures from different sets around the house and setting them up in his room.

This may explain his funny behavior at his preschool pagent this year. They made the mistake of putting Max on the end, right in front of the living Nativity (pre-k kids). He was overwhelmed. He spend the entire show with his back to the audience and staring at the "real life" Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus.




We thought it was funny. I'm not sure the other parents felt the same way.

Luke was also very concerned this year that our tree wasn't up in time. He literally wore us down over Thanksgiving to get that tree up. These pictures were taken on Sunday when we finally gave in. Notice that there's no staging in our tree photos. Normally I would put them in Christmas pajamas and take a lot of pictures. Not this year. After Luke asked for the 100th time, we just put the thing up.

In hindsight, I'm glad we did it that weekend. They both love the tree and take turns every morning turning it on. The both have to do it, so one turns it on, then the other turns it off and then on again.




So now we're down to only a few days until Christmas. This has been a very sweet season for us and I pray that it is for you as well. Thanks for keeping up with us and we want to wish a very Merry Christmas to our dear family and friends.