A month gone??? Where did it go?

It seems like we just returned from the Coast and it was Christmas. 

We did manage to visit Santa.  That’s l to r, daughter, Jennifer, Mom, Santa, me, Julie and Sampson down front.  That’s 5 generations if you count Sam.

 

However, this year Christmas was totally different from years past: shopping till we dropped, decorating every room in the house, and of course the extravagant Christmas morning breakfast.  This year we celebrated a very simple but meaningful Christmas morning. 

 

Shopping… well, we did do a little shopping for the grandkids, but that was all.  After many years of exchanging gifts between our 4 generations (the upper 3 generations either bought everything they wanted or were trying to downsize the ‘stuff’ accumulated over a lifetime) our daughter Jennifer, thankfully called a halt to the commercialism.  

 

Decorating… now that was just hard to do when everything was either packed away or given away.  We did add a decorative steering wheel cover and our favorite hand carved Christmas decoration given to us by our niece, Denise.

 

Breakfast… it was much more simple at mom’s with all of us contributing.  You know we enjoyed it just as much, it was just as delicious, and it was so much easier.

 

This year mom, Jenny and the girls, Julie and Jamie, and Tom and I enjoyed a simple church service.  We sang Christmas carols, celebrated Jesus’ birthday with the rest of our small church family, and were reminded again of the reason for the season, the gift of salvation.  I like the Quakerly way of worship; keep it simple. 

 

We hope to get out of Fresno for a couple of days before the first of the year.  Julie has been working her ‘you know what off’ as the manager of the Santa picture event at River Park and she will be traveling again with us if only for a couple of days.  Fun, fun, fun.

 

Then begins 2012 and we will be On The Road Again, Caching Places that we’ve Never Been.

 

And so in closing, Tom and I hope your Christmas was as meaningful as ours was and your New Year will be healthy, filled with exciting safe travels, and many, many blessings.