December 2023 — Page 11

The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas – Day 4

Today our special thing was to put snowflakes on our windows in the family room and kitchen. We have done this so many years, but the girls wanted to do it again. Bethany said it makes the rooms look so much prettier. Besides doing the snowflakes, we started reading a new book called Gideon’s Gift by Karen Kingsbury. I have never read this book, though I had bought it several years ago and put it with our Christmas books. Bethany suggested we start it today, so we did, and so far the kids like it.

It was a pleasant day just doing a few things around the house like finally getting ornaments on the top branches of the tree and wrapping a few gifts.

The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas – Day 3

Today we went out and bought candy to put in jars as gifts to hand out at the McDonald’s up the street from us. We buy biscuits there very frequently and occasional diet cokes and just like to thank them for their friendly service. We filled 6 jars and will take it to them in the next week or so.

After we finished the jars, I had something planned that I thought might be fun as part of our Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas. We were all together in the family room and I told the girls that it was optional, but I wanted to ask them if they had a special Christmas memory – whether it was a happy or funny or just a fond memory of a past Christmas. It took them a little while, but most of them came up with a memory they wanted to share. Bethany shared about a Christmas Eve that she opened a gift and it had several small Madame Alexander dolls in it and how excited she was. Zola had a really funny memory that was not very funny to Bill when it happened. It was Christmas Eve and Bill started to read the Christmas story from Luke and suddenly something happened and two of the kids started to laugh and, of course, Bill ask them to stop and for some reason it was one of those times it all just seemed so funny and they could not stop and that caused the other kids to laugh and that made Bill even more irritated. It was a chain reaction with all the kids falling on each other laughing and Bill was saying it was so innappropriate . It all ended well, but it was a very funny memory that I had forgotten until Zola mentioned it tonight. It was kind of fun listening to the memories and hoping we were making more good memories the kids will talk about years from now.