Monday, December 31, 2012

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.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Twenty-Six Months Old

Wow, long time/no blog!  It's been a busy month.

We went to Michigan to visit with Don's family for Thanksgiving.  Cooper had a good time hanging out with his cousins.
While there we had a belated celebration of Don's parents' 50th anniversary.
Cooper sang in the children's program at Community Bible Study.  His teacher had to hold on to him the whole time so he wouldn't run away.
We put up our Christmas tree and began getting ready for Christmas.
We went to a birthday party for Jesus.

We went Christmas caroling in our neighborhood.  Cooper and I are on the far left (he's in a stroller).
So, as you can see, we've been doing a lot of celebrating various things.  It's been a fun month.  I am looking forward to Christmas more this year than I have in the past because Cooper is excited.  We are trying to play down the materialistic aspect of it, but still . . .

This month also brought a brief stay in the hospital for Don after he passed out twice last week.  Hopefully that problem has been resolved though.  It hasn't happened again this week, which is a good sign.

Merry Christmas to all of my blog readers!