Day 12 of Just Joy's Christmas Traditions Countdown:About the time I was in high school, my parents started hosting a Christmas Eve open house for some of the extended family. Over the years it became a much loved and looked forward to evening. Mom spent weeks cooking and baking for it. A few days before, my dad would start decorating their downstairs family room. He loved lights (I obviously inherited that from him) and would string them around the walls and windows making the room quite magical. Our whole family would crowd into this small room and have a wonderful meal followed by the littles acting out the Nativity, and then a talent program. There was a small gift for...
Joy. According to the dictionary, joy Is “a great feeling of pleasure and happiness, a desire to rejoice.” I feel, deep in my heart, that we are all on this planet so that we might have joy. I can tell you right off that the two things that bring the most joy to my life are my family and my faith. That encompasses a lot of territory.But there are also small moments in our days and lives that can still be considered joy. For instance, I remember a Sunday a few years ago. Most of our family had met for dinner. It was in the spring, a cloudy slightly breezy day. We were all sitting out in our front yard. I...
Traditions = Memories It's true in most ways that "you can't take it with you," but I'd like to think that our memories are something that will stay with us forever. As parents and grandparents, what an opportunity we have to create memories that tie us together for generations! I am blessed to have wonderful memories of Christmases when I was growing up. I'm extremely grateful to have grown up in a home where family was the everything. And, well, Christmas was right up there with it. My parents loved Christmas and provided us with traditions that now live on with my grandchildren. Christmas Eve was the very best night of the whole year. Let me tell you just a...
When our kids were quite young we started a tradition of doing the 12 days of Christmas for someone. Sometimes it was good friends and sometimes it was a family that we thought might need some cheering up. Each night for the 12 nights leading up to Christmas we would drop off some kind of a treat, or a decoration, or some item we thought would be useful to them. These became known as "sneak treats" as we would try very hard to not get caught. If we thought they were starting to suspect us, we would go to great lengths to throw them off, such as having a neighbor kid drop it off, or someone they didn't know ring the doorbell...
Wait! Stop! I have to tell myself this more and more. This ride called life keeps speeding up! And it kicks into overdrive with the holidays. My kids are growing up TOO fast and I don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss the rest of life as well. (And I don't want my kids to think that when you are a grown up holidays are just one big grumpy stress.) So I'm sharing my reminder with you. Pause as the crazy month starts. Breath for a second and ask yourself a couple of questions. Am I running like a chicken with it's head cut off? Am I enjoying this special holiday month or am I...
