Sophie is in this “extra” choir outside of school.  They performed this weekend for the holiday season.  The day we went (Saturday) was a day filled with small upsets & disappointments, but it culminated when we went to Sophia’s concert, & the ONLY place I could sit was at the very far back of the room (with empty rows in front of us).  This is not the 1st time something like this occurred (handicap seating is often crappy), but it was just one more thing that day…

There is this new TV show called ‘Speechless’, & one of the actors is a teenage boy in a wheelchair, who is incapable of speech, & the mom is quite an advocate for her son, who will make it quite clear of how he should be treated…Needless to say, I was thrilled to hear that Mark went all “Speechless” on them, when they tried to be proud of completing the minimum accessibility requirements!

Despite that, I love Christmas. As a child, my favorite tradition was to prepare the manger for Christ: every good deed “earned” a piece of straw for the manger. That tradition never caught on w/my kids, so we did other stuff…

We have tried to keep the focus on Christ (our tree has only nativity ornaments, & most of our decorations are nativity related.–even our advent calendar is a nativity scene, & the while the actual nativity set we display is nice, it is not fragile, so it was ok if little hands touched it– though we also had a Fisher-Price nativity play set that was pulled out & added to their toys in December).  Even Santa remembered Christ in our home, & just as Christ received 3 gifts from the wise men, Santa only gave our kids 3 gifts (though when u add in a gift from your parents, from each sibling, from both sets of grandparents, & from Mark’s 5 siblings, & my 6 siblings, there’s a LOT more than 3 gifts–Thank goodness our siblings began to rotate, & do 1 family gift, instead of 11 individual gifts!)

In addition, to make the holiday less commercial & more personal, we continued Mark’s favorite tradition of making gifts for each other. It doesn’t always happen for Mark & me, but we often help the kids make each other gifts. These are my favorite gifts.

However, this year, I don’t feel very “Christmasy”.  My kids are all grown up, & it has seemed to loose it’s “magic” when everyone can pick out their own gifts!  But this year on Christmas, we will be able to talk to my missionary son (serving in California, for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).  After all those years of trying to put Christ into Christmas, that will certainly put the focus on Christ on Christmas Day!  Who knew I had to wait until now to find Christ in Christmas!