Thanks Be To God For His Indescribable Gift!

My last post of the year. Here is Christmas summed up in a few pictures. A lot of pictures of stuff. Fun stuff. Fun to give and fun to receive.

It's so easy to lose the real meaning of Christmas with all the stuff. Our bedtime stories are always scripture of the birth of Jesus and we discuss it a lot. We find a good cause to give to, like shoebox gifts or Angle Trees, and this year we gave to Zeke's applied learning project of giving hats and scarves to cancer patients. As adults even we forget the real meaning. It's not the gifts that consume us, but the hustle and bustle of everything.

Beneath it all is Jesus. God's gift of salvation wrapped up in the little baby born in the manger.
Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! 2 Cor. 9:15

~Little Christmas~

Lijee couldn't stand the wait, so they each got to open a gift before dinner.

 We stacked up their piles of gifts. Spoiled little boy's pile is taller than him.

Grannie and Grandad celebrated with us.

Zekers was pretty chuffed with cash.

Daisy takes after Mommy--she loves her cameras.

 Elijah handcuffed me right away.

 My rockstar's shiny new electric guitar.

~Christmas at Granny's~

While there was no Pretty Kitty lotion this year, we still had some good laughs.

~A White Christmas at Mom and Dad's~

 We woke up on Christmas Eve to snow!

 None of these tracks were here 10 minutes before this picture.

 Zekers likes to make snow angels and then make concentric circles surrounding it.

 I took this from inside. Too cold for me!

 They were busy little beavers. Look at all those tracks.

 Grampa is a trooper and always pulls them sledding behind the tractor.

 

Frito loves the snow.

Fresh snow means snow soup.

Spending the morning outside in the snow means hot chocolate.

Later in the day, the family played a rousing game of Poop the Potato. 

 Kids VS Adults.
Kids won, but their strategy may have sort of been unfair.

 Mom made Ashley a teddy bear from her dad's shirt along with a picture of him in that shirt. Very special.

My great nieces have the prettiest blue eyes.

When you leave Santa a note at your house telling him you will be at Grandma's house, he brings the gifts there! Daisy left him a sweet note telling him we left cookies and milk. Gramma laughed and suggested he might want beer. Daisy told him that but said he shouldn't drink and fly. 

 Here was the note he left:

~Skiing at Snow Creek!~

Snow Creek is near Kansas City, MO. No, there are not mountains in Kansas. It's a big hill. But we strapped on skis and slid down, so that works for me!

There has not been any snow yet. They had to wait until the temperatures stayed below freezing to start making snow. They planned on opening a few weeks before, but the weather was not cooperating. Our plans were to ski on the 26th and head back to TX the following day. Finally on the 24th they said it was cold enough and opening day would be the 26th. Yay! We got all 3 kids enrolled in the same ski school and the fun began.

 Unfortunately, when the cold came, Mother Nature brought it! The high for the day was 14 degrees. The high. I don't have have words for how cold it was, just letters:  BRRRRRR. Here we are warming up at lunch.

 Abe's nose was literally blue at the first break we took to warm up. I didn't think that could be good, but it pinked back up. Whew!

 The Daiser had a wiggly jiggly loose tooth.

 Everyone finished the day a skier with hardly any tears. Success!

 Merry Christmas!
Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!