The Holidays

I know I haven't updated in a while, but things have just been crazy. I trust that everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I hope that you all had an opportunity to spend time with family and close friends and remember the real reason that we gather and celebrate the Christmas season!! On that note, Lee and I have started a new tradition in our family.

After seeing how commercialized Christmas has become, particularly with children who believe in and worship Santa Claus more so than they do Jesus Christ, Lee and I decided we wanted it to be different for our children. We started by scaling back on JLee's ghifts this Christmas. We even went so far as to ask our parents and relatives not to go over board with their purchases. We told him the nativity story daily, but were really just searching for a way to help him understand in his two year old brain why we celebrate...why we give gifts, why we get together with family, why everything. It occured to me that Joshua gets the whole birthay thing. He knows that at a birthday we celebrate one person, have cake, and give presents. So, we had birthday party for Jesus. Each time Joshua was given presents we made sure to talk to him about why he was getting the presents...that it was Jesus's birthday and we give each other presents to celebrate that day. I don't know if he got it completely. I'm sure he didn't understand all that I hoped he would. But it's a start at least. We even baked a cake for Jesus and sung happy birthday to Jesus. I think we'll do it again next year as well!!

On another note...seeing so much of our family this holiday season helped Lee and I to reflect on how blessed we are and what things we would like to chang during 2009. We have family nearby that we can count on. Family that we are very close to and love dearly. In that respect we are so blessed. But, we also have family that, for what ever reason, we are not quite as close with. We're both a bit sad about it, but have decided to do what we can over the next 12 months to see if it's something we can change. We're going to try to do more on our parts to initiate and maintain interactions, whereas in the past we just let it go. We'll see what happens, and we'll keep ya'll posted;)!

What follows is a picture tour of our favorite Christmas moments. Sorry, there are no pictures of Jesus's birthday party:(. We were all so involved in pulling it all together, that we completely forgot the pictures!!!