The Joy of Grace

Keeping Christmas Dec 23

Our Christmas festivities have officially begun! I must give you a warning: this entry has a lot of pictures...most people like that better than reading, but just wanted to give you a heads up.

On Friday night, we had our gift card exchange party with our friends. The night was filled with sweet little ones running about (and crawling~that would be Savannah~she can do it now!), stealing gift cards from one another, silly games involving Christmas carols, and an entire Wal-Mart chicken tender platter FREE (2 things about that aspect of the party: first, let me just tell you that I despise Wal-Mart and have been there one time in the past year but they have great chicken tenders & secondly, thank you to Julie who put up with the mess to get our tenders that night). For those of you who may be interested, here is who is in the picture (from left to right)~Savannah, Maggie Foreman, Avery Cross, Marianna Luce, Lily Foreman. Jack, we missed you that night!

Then, on Saturday morning, we headed to West Point, Mississippi to have our Christmas with my grandmother and family there. It was much fun, especially for Savannah who basically had 20 sets of eyes on her the entire afternoon. The neatest part about the day is that all 8 grandchildren were there, which hasn't happened in over 5 years. The picture I posted of us with our sweet grandmother is not good at all, but let me explain. My mom and Uncle David were taking the pictures~basically the two worst people to handle cameras. Instead of letting us know when they would shoot, they just simply clicked for a couple of minutes, hence the awful picture.

Tonight, I looked at Aaron and literally clapped with glee~"Tomorrow is Christmas Eve! Savannah won't know the difference, but we will!" I am very excited. I suppose we'll spend the day packing for Missouri (we'll go to my parents Christmas Day and stay through the weekend) and being excited. I told Aaron I wanted to start some sort of tradition with just our little family. I have not really thought of a good one yet, but Aaron is dying for white chocolate covered pretzels. So, even though Savannah cannot really join in on that tradition this year, maybe we'll start the tradition of making those on Christmas Eve. And, I'd like to go out to lunch just the three of us...that sounds a little funny, but we never just go out by ourselves and I think that would be fun. And, of course, at some point we will read The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado. If you have been my friend for any length of time, I have read this book to you, trears streaming down my face.

Tomorrow afternoon, we'll go to Aaron's parents where we will open presents with them and have dinner that night...much fun!

As I close this entry, I want to share that the Lord has truly reminded me in such a fresh way this season that He came as a precious Babe. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords as a baby~amazing! To have the abundant blessing of a baby in our home is to understand a bit more of what Mary must have experienced as she held Jesus in her hands, all the time knowing that He came to die for her...for each of us. Immanuel, God with us!

In a Christmas letter from precious friends, they enclosed a quote by Peter Marshall that spoke volumes to me this night. "We want to hold on to the old customs and traditions because they strengthen family ties, bind us to our friends, make us one with all mankind for whom the Child was born, and bring us back again to the God Who gave His only begotten Son, that 'whosoever believeth in Him should not prerish, but have everlasting life.' So we will not 'spend' Christmas...nor 'observe' Christmas. We will 'keep' Christmas-keep it as it is...in all the loveliness of its ancient traditions. May we keep it in our hearts, that we may be kept in its hope."

Merry Christmas!