Christmas Celebrations

The month of December is always lots of fun for us and always very busy. Every Saturday, and some Sundays, we have Christmas parties with different sides of our families. I always love it and don't mind the busyness because there is such a fun aspect that we are celebrating Christ so much throughout that month. I'm always the person that loves to have the Christmas cards done right away and mailed the weekend of Thanksgiving and it just seems that starts off a magical month of rejoicing.

For the past few years we have been celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas with the Hamstra side of the family at Thanksgiving. With so many people, and half from out of town, it works out to have one fun party. This year with Grandma having had the stroke over the summer, we held the party in the room upstairs at Oak Grove so it was more safe for her. We had a lot of fun playing games and sitting around chatting. Afterward we went over to Mary's house for desserts and grab bag gifts. I was wondering how I was going to handle have to leave Gram there by herself while we all went to celebrate without her but, as mom told me would happen, she was very tired by the end of the party and very much ready to go back to her room. I'm trying to take advantage of the time we have with her now as we had such a scare this summer. I also just so much enjoy the friendship that she and I developed since we moved here. So many things that I see God had in mind for this move.

Opening presents with Grandma
Me & Gram Hamstra

Another thing that was bittersweet this year was having my Grandma Ferguson home. My Ferguson grandparents had been traveling to Florida from Oct-April every year for many, many years now so we haven't been able to see them at the holidays. While we miss Grandpa, it was very neat getting to have Grandma around this year to enjoy the fun. I was thankful for the strength that I have seen in her the past few months that I know can only be coming from God; going through her first holidays without Grandpa and being someplace different. She has been attending church with my sister and my Aunt and Uncle and she's really enjoying it.

One tradition we always used to do with Grandma Ferguson when we were little was make Christmas cookies. A few of us decided that would be a fun thing to do this year with our kids with Grandma. We had a great time!One of the days at Jackson's preschool in December they got a special visit from Santa! The teachers let us know ahead of time so we could take pictures. I love Santa and while I know some families think including him takes away from the meaning of Christmas, our family does a great job of celebrating the "magic" of Santa while keeping Christ the focus. Our kids seem to really be able to grasp that; we are thankful!

Jackson was a very brave boy this year with Santa :) We actually went to see him again with Emma when he was at the American Legion and Santa looked at Jackson and said "I saw you at preschool!" Jackson was very excited he remembered him :)Alaina was a little skeptical of this big man in a red suit!
Jackson's preschool class
Emma got to do some special programs this year too! Our Love Notes Children's program this year was called "The Greatest Christmas Card in the Whole Wide World." It was all about the different ideas an traditions of Christmas and how we shouldn't forget Christ. It was a very neat program!
Emma was part of the greenery card and got to be a Christmas tree. She also had two lines this time and did them with pure Emma style ;)
She also had a wonderful Christmas program at her school this year. The theme was "Christmas Around the World." She sangs Christmas songs in 5 five different languages!
We took some fun pictures before we left because school gym pictures never turn out!

Since I'm Emma's room mom at school, I got to plan her Christmas party. It was lots of fun! Her teacher is so great!We had a couple of other Christmas event that we went to that we had a wonderful time at but didn't take any pics :( And since this post is getting so long and I've been working on it for a while, I'll go ahead and be done except for this one last thing......
We always let the kids eat cake for breakfast on Christmas morning to celebrate Jesus' birthday. This year Emma came up with ho, ho cake because since Santa works for Jesus to help share all His birthday presents, she thought He might think it was funny to have a "ho ho ho" cake ;)