Christmas 2014

I love Christmas.  I spend as much thought, energy, and time as I possibly can helping my family celebrate Christmas.  We bake, we craft, we read, we sing, and we anticipate.  December is my favorite time of the year.  This year is was sure to be even better than ever because we finally had all of our people in our home!
As we got closer to December, however, the reality of our situation hit me:  my two newest daughters both have birthday in December:  YIKES!  Other realities hit me too:  there are alot of things that they don't know about Christmas.  Aside from our family traditions, which would be all new to the girls, there are lots of other things that would be new too:  Christmas music (though they did come to me knowing Feliz Navidad!), the fact that Christmas is really Jesus' birthday, the cultural elements of Christmas like popular movies and decorations, and the idea of a school break to celebrate something.
There was so much to teach-and we loved using the month of December to expose the girls to all that Christmas means to us.  Ryan and I agreed that our main goal was to help the girls learn what it means to celebrate.  As I sit by the tree as our Christmas activities are coming to an end, I can see that our plans were once again small in comparison to what God had laid out.  Here are a few highlights from this week:
Christmas Eve service-For our family, the main event of Christmas is the Children's Worship Service on Christmas Eve.  This is a total family effort each year and is a great way for us to learn together and worship together.  Joanna joined the preschool choir and was a star-she knew her entire song, did all the motions, and keep the beat beautifully.  Naomi joined the other big kids in the elementary choir which required her to learn at least 7 new songs. Abigail was one of the two narrators and Ryan was the service host and also helped lead the worship portion of the service.  While directing the program there was no room for emotion, but as soon as we were finished the tears flowed.   Here we were, trying to give Jesus a birthday gift of worship, and really He was continuing to give us good gifts.  Having my whole family together, and having all eight of us singing praises to Jesus was a gift I had waited to receive for many longs months.
Another highlight came in the form of the Milne cousins Nativity play.  My girls have learned well what Christmas is about-and they joined with their cousins and siblings to present their version of the Christmas story-complete with costumes!!  Naomi was also able to join in the annual reading of the Christmas story this year at the Yoho family Christmas.  She was so proud to be able to join with the big kids in this family tradition.
Not being a musician myself, I am always thrilled when my brother-in-law pulls out his guitar on Christmas and lea
ds us in carols.  This year we capped off our festivities with several family favorites and were blessed to have Ryan's grandparents (age 94 and 93) join us as well.
There have been so many more great moments, but these are just a few of the highlights from Christmas 2014.