Merry Christmas

Last night I received the most marvelous gift and it was something that couldn’t be wrapped. We always celebrate Christmas at our house on Christmas Eve. We all go to church first, then back to our house for dinner and open of presents. We live in a big old Victorian house in the Village of Milford, not unlike the one pictured above and we decorate it extensively for Christmas. We had a nice fire going and the whole family gathered around.

This year, for the first time in a while there were no babies; but, that meant that all of the little grandchildren were mobile this year. What a scene that was! It was chaos and the din from four happy, giggling kids and seven adults (my sister-in-law from St. Louis spends the holidays with us, too) made a joyous noise in the house. And to make matters worse grandpa gave each grandchild a Nerf sword, so there were sword fights everywhere. And of course, lots and lots of noisy new toys. Boy, are grandpa and grandma ever glad that those swords went home with the grandchildren. We always told our kids that someday, when they had kids, we'd get even with them. Ha!

So, my gift – the best ever – was to have all of my family here, healthy and enjoying the season with us. It’s noisy and rambunctious and something almost always gets broken and things are spilled, but we wouldn’t trade it for the world. Beyond the joy of celebrating the birth of Jesus the second best thing is having family to celebrate with at the holidays. We hope you have a joyous Christmas. As for us, we’re resting and recovering today – and maybe starting to think about how much fun Easter will be this year, too. I wonder if the Easter Bunny should put swords in their baskets, too; or, maybe we'll have a water balloon tossing contest.