We very clearly told Jared and Lydia they needed to come straight into our room Christmas morning and to not leave their rooms until 7:00. At 7:02 they were in our room. I am not sure what time they woke up but they did a great job following directions. We snuggled in bed and watched the Church's "Joy to the World" video from a few years back and sang a few Christmas songs together. We headed out to the front room to check out our stockings and eat some of our traditional orange rolls before getting ready for church. This year we were the recipients of another families Christmas tradition to bring breakfast to a family Christmas morning and were treated to eggs and sticky buns. We had found a note and plate of cookies on our porch on Friday and had fun guessing who would be stopping by. We made it to church with time to spare (very important to Mark. I hate being late but I don't need to be there 10 minutes early) and enjoyed great talks and beautiful music. It was actually really nice to have a simple church service on Christmas morning and I'm glad it worked out that way. It was also really great to not have to teach a lesson!
I wish my hair curled under like this!!
After church we came home and opened our presents. We had a fun wrapping paper fight and enjoyed fun quiet afternoon enjoying our gifts and sending Jared and Lydia on their scavenger hunt. We often wait until one of them remembers that we do it and then when they bring it up have fun with it. It's nice to have gifts out and then some surprise ones they "work" for. After the scavenger hunt we stopped by the fire station to deliver cookies and thank them for keeping us safe. They were very friendly and invited us in to play on the trucks. It was fun to chat with them and Jared and Lydia enjoyed climbing on the trucks. We came home and put on White Christmas while we got dinner (ham of course) ready. We tried to watch it 2 years ago I think and Jared and Lydia were not interested but this year they really enjoyed it. We put our last ornaments on our 25 Days of Christmas tree and had a very merry day together.
The church put out a really great Christmas initiative this year, "Light the world" and we started strong but didn't follow through as well as I would have liked. This was kind of an odd year where I actually felt a lot of pressure to make our Christmas season super spiritual. Not a bad thing in any way but sometimes when I feel this way I actually just feel contrary and then do the opposite. I didn't quite do that but I really had a hard time wrapping my head around the fun things I love to do and the spiritual things I know I should do and should love to do. I felt like the fun things were being presented as bad or not something I should do and it kind of irritated me. It was a weird feeling that I can't quite explain and am doing a poor job of. Maybe it just felt more forced, I didn't just naturally feel the desire to do all the spiritual things one could do (all year) but especially at Christmas? I can't even give any real examples of things that happened to make me feel this way but I just felt kind off a lot of this season. Sort of like all the articles out there about "mom pressure" or rather about not judging other moms. I haven't really dealt with that much since I have been a mom, I've just done my own thing but that is the best description I can come up with. I did really like a comment a speaker made yesterday at church. She talked about how she can see clear times in her life where she chose to distance herself from Christ by not doing the things we know we should do and it really resonated with me. Some of that has been going on and maybe that affected my Christmas feelings? It's something to think about and re-evaluate.
We did have a great Christmas and spent a lot of time together as a family which was really nice. They are the best most lasting gift and will always be my favorite. I am grateful for the moments I could feel the Christmas spirit and believe Mark, Jared and Lydia did too.
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