{The Events of December......}

 

 

 

 

 

 

I kicked the month of December off with preparing to teach a lesson for Relief Society.  Many feelings came in my moments of preparing.  One strong impression came as I sat in the Stake Temple Week Chapel Session while listening to President Mead give a talk about visiting a Temple open house & Temple Square with a Grandson and taking note of the "FEELING" that accompanied in those sacred places.  Another impression came as I found a book and a nativity thinking it would cross off my list of TO DO's and that would be it for our family to serve.  While in the passing moments of a day and walking by this purchase several times wondering how we would strategize getting this nativity to our Selected {Park} family I looked closer at the book and wanted it to be more than just another Christmas book.  Opening it up to read it, I instantly fell in LOVE.  The thought of having to give the book away before I had purchased one of my own killed me.  I wanted one.  The book is titled A Christ Centered Christmas by Emily Freeman (not my neighbor;)).  My focused changed when the author gave me the FEELING I wanted in my home this Christmas  when she said, " Having not only the magic of Santa, but also the reality of the Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the true reason behind our celebration."

We already enjoy the lights, colors, jolly ol' St. Nick, smell of a fresh Christmas tree, & all the trimmings we use to deck our halls, but this year the word "FEELING" came to mind.  I wanted my children to FEEL something more, understand a little more.  This book was my guide.  For our secret family we set out to do the 12 days of Christmas, for our Anthony family we put more thought and feeling into our purchases, and with out neighbor gifts we felt a little nostalgic and made recipes that felt warm to us.   There were giggles in the car in the dark nights of December as we taught our kids to KNOCK & RUN or felt the hustle as we drove in the late afternoon to sneek a treat to their mailbox and feared we had been caught, or tried to catch our secret family as we thought we had them figured out to arrive at our doorstep around 7:30 p.m. each night.  We experienced tender moments where both Liberty and Burton expressed concern for students in their homerooms who might not get something from Santa this year and how we could be a surprise for them.  I felt the opportunity to fit in a project I thought I would never complete and enjoy the moments of creating and sewing stockings for a surprise for our secret family.  Only to have this response from Burton one day as we traveled together to deliver a surprise "They are going to know its us!  Why do you have to be so creative.  Next year we can't be creative!"  We felt the spirit together as we attended a ward with a missionary we loved and realized that many more people have far less than we do and  how fortunate we were to take a trip together to Salt Lake see the lights on Temple Square, and pull away from that meeting with an immediate, unprompted Thank You from a son in the back of the car.  We are so blessed....