Treasured Traditions

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The stockings were hung on the fireplace with care--
In hopes that their Papa would fill them right there!

A TWINKLE--










A sPaRkLe!!

A Glow Quite Remarkable!

And memories to last you, all of forever!

A childhood tradition that I still treasure was this. My mama taught us that since Jesus was with us in spirit and wouldn't eat cake the way that we do, our tree would be His "cake" and it was important that we do our best to decorate it with great care doing the best job as we were able. Then on Christmas morning, with Great Grandma Bessie and Meema present, we would all gather around the "cake" tree and sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. Imprinted in my memory is the sight and sound of Great Grandma Bessie getting blessed in her soul and shouting. Daddy was even able to capture this experience on film. This year, I was feeling quite sentimental and decided to decorate our tree to honor my childhood memory. Our tree is decorated to look like a very large Christmas gift! A picture of our family as it is now is hung above the bow. And the gift tag reads, To: Jesus, From: Our Family.





























Realizing the importance of these kinds of traditions and knowing what they have meant to me, we decided that we wanted to start a new tradition for our own family. For every year since Daryl began to experience Christmas, Mark reads the entire scripture account of the real Christmas story all the way through to the wisemen. Then we share our gifts with each other. Since Nevaeh's favorite Christmas song is "Away In A Manger," we added this song to our family tradition. Our Christmas was very special this year with the presence of our beautiful little dark haired, dark eyed angel!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESUS!