Christmas

Oh how I love Christmas! I thank my mother for that. I love it when Santa comes to town. You see, Santa always waits until the children are in bed and then fills their stockings full of fun presents and candy and leaves out their biggest present right in front of the tree, and then he leaves. And every year (as expected) all the young children . . . and older children . . . wake up around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and creep downstairs to see what Santa has left. Every year growing up we would wake up early and would quietly go downstairs and get our stockings and creep upstairs and open up the gifts from our stockings together showing each other the fun things that we received and then wait until morning time to wake up our parents to open the rest of our gifts. It was always so exciting. And Santa did this until we left the house or got married! Yes, it's true . . . the last Christmas I was home, while engaged to Lamon, I remember waking up in the early morning hours with my sisters and creeping downstairs to see what Santa had brought. So of course now with kids it is even more fun, only they aren't old enough to want to wake up early and go see what Santa has brought them, so I of course woke them up as soon as I woke up because "I " was so excited!! There are so many fun years ahead!

Some of the highlights of this Christmas were:

5. On Christmas Eve we went to the Barksdales house where John and Dave are residing while Grandma and Grandpa Barksdale are on a mission, and we had a party. John was determined to make Ada walk, and by the end of the night . . .

John has some type of magical touch because she hasn't done it since!

4. Of course it was wonderful to watch the kids open their presents on Christmas morning! After every present Drew would say, "My 'every' own . . . this" or "my 'every' own that." We kept telling him, "No Drew. It's my 'very' own this." But of course Drew knows everything, and it was so cute anyway we just left him alone. So you can blame us for his improper use of the English language!


3. For the gift exchange on the Mack side of the family, they decided to give meaningful gifts this year that took thought and not so much "money." Somehow we missed this memo . . . and we came with a couple games bought at the last minute, but it was so neat watching everyone else give their gifts. They were so sweet! I was loving watching the love between each family member as they gave their gifts. It was so wonderful, when they told us we hadn't received our gift I didn't even realize it because I was enjoying the exchange between everyone so much. It made me want to do better, and put more thought into my gift giving next year. Todd had our name and he drew us a picture of Mount Timpanogos. It was so awesome.
How cool is that?










2. The night before Christmas Eve we aked Drew, "Drew . . . who is going to come tomorrow night? . . . ) Drew turned to us and raised his eyebrows and said, " . . . Jesus?" It was a sweet moment where we realized that he had more spiritual things on his mind! It is wonderful how kids can put your mind in focus sometimes!

1. I was pretty sad that on Christmas Eve we didn't get to sing, because anyone in my family "should" know that this is the most important part of Christmas! I love it when my family gathers around the piano and sings every Christmas song in the hymn book and then just for the pure enjoyment of it starts to sing just about "every" song in the hymn book after we're done. It is kind of hard though when the amount of babies in the family now outnumbers the adults! So I made my siblings promise to sing with me on Christmas night after my kids were in bed. Sue, Dave and their significant others, Dustin and Ariel, were nice enough to help me with my Christmas wish, and came over and sang. We sang the Christmas hymns and then started making requests on different hymns. We were kind of being silly and laughing a lot while singing the songs, and I wasn't feeling like we were really singing praises like we should. I made the request to sing "I believe in Christ" wanting to really think about the words and I made it about half way through the first verse and balled my eyes out throughout the rest of it. Oh how I love that song! This was the best part of Christmas for me. I have a strong testimony in my Savior. And of course my siblings have lived with me long enough to know how I am, and they are way past the point of getting embarrassed by me when I get emotional!