Author: Joyce

For Christmas this year, we spent a night at a bed and breakfast with my side of the family. Enjoyed playing in the pool, playing with cousins and enjoying the ice carvings.

Simple presents and lots of love!

Matching pajamas, cookies for Santa, a midnight hug from Santa, sledding with friends. The simple things make Christmas extra special.

I can not remember, but I think this Santa was in Shipsi.  After we visited him, he gave each child a bag with fruit and other fun Christmas goodies.

One day, we went to the mall to visit Grandpa at work.  Grandma saw some cute stuffed animals on a very good sale and offered to buy one for each of the kids as an early Christmas gift.  Each of the kids picked out a special one, but Audrey did not want a big stuffed animal.  She wanted the duck.  So she was treated to the duck.

We roamed and we got lunch.  We enjoyed being with my parents.  Then we discovered Audrey lost her duck.  We could not find it anywhere.  Audrey was upset and clearly wanted her duck.  We prayed about it.  That God would let us find my little girl’s special duck that she had fallen in love with.  We looked and looked.  Finally we told Audrey that we thought her duck was really lost.  But we kept praying. 

Grandpa said he would go down and look one more time.  He returned with Audrey’s duck.  The pretzel kiosk in the middle of the mall saw Audrey drop her duck and knew it belonged to the “lady with all the kids”.  They had put the duck in the window so we would be sure to find it. Since we were looking on the floor, we never noticed it sitting in the window and they never saw us going by.

This was the first time that Audrey had a prayer obviously answered.  And she still owns the duck.

 

This could have been an awful Christmas. Allan went overseas to help with earthquake relief. We both had talked about it and going was the right thing. He was gone over Christmas and New Years.

But, this was a good Christmas. Hard, but good. There were so many people who stepped in to encourage and help our family. Grandma Grace brought all the kids special toys, the neighbor and Opa kept our driveway shoveled. Mark did very well on Bible quizzing. We were able to talk to Allan on satellite phone. Mark requested the Grinch song for Daddy over the radio because he knew Allan was listening. Then the radio station talked with Allan about what he was doing. We spent Christmas day with family. The kids and I enjoyed the season doing a lot of baking and crafts and just being silly.

When Allan returned home, we celebrated Christmas and him being home.

The Christmas when Audrey was 2, her Sunday School teacher was the best.  Kristi believed that teaching Bible truths could be done at any age.  She taught the children the whole Christmas story: we are all sinners and need a savior.  That Jesus, fully God and fully man, came to earth as a baby so that he could pay the penalty for our wrong doing when he died on the cross.  Jesus did not stay dead, but rose again!  

But she also let the children play.  One evening, Audrey and her friends pretended to be Mary and played with their babies.  

For fun, I thought I would go through my old pictures and enjoy sharing a month of memories.