A Blessed Christmas

I enjoyed Christmas more this year than I have in the past.  I think this was mostly due to Cooper.  It is much more fun to share Christmas with a child, and now he is old enough to be excited about it, though he still doesn't completely "get it."

A lot of people asked us if we were doing the Santa Claus thing.  No.  We read him books about Santa Claus, but told him they were just stories.  We gave him gifts, but didn't try to pretend they were from Santa.  I'm not judging other parents who do things differently; that's just the way we decided to handle it.

We're also trying to keep the focus on Jesus and not on materialism.  Even though he got gifts, we didn't really play that part up beforehand.  We talked about Jesus' birthday.  As it got close, I told him that Jesus is so important, that we all get presents for His birthday.

I intended for it to be small, but we ended up getting him quite a bit.  The poor boy just wanted to play with the presents he opened, but no, we would take one away from him and shove another one at him to open.  Oh well.

My brother and his family weren't able to come, but we invited a couple from church (the lady who introduced Don and me) over for brunch, along with my parents.  It was kind of quiet, but nice, really.

Don has been off for about 3 weeks and, other than spending a night in the hospital just before Christmas after passing out in church (another story for another day, but he's fine now), we've been enjoying all the extra time we've had together.  It's going to be hard on Cooper and me as well as Don when he has to go back to work, but I guess we'll adjust.

Happy New Year to all of you.  May 2013 be a year full of blessings.