"Receiving Christ" Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Our pastor had a great sermon on Christmas Eve this year. He talked about how our culture tends to say that the real meaning of Christmas is about "giving." He challenged that idea in that the real meaning of Christmas is really about "receiving." That we have One True Giver ...who gave us EVERYTHING by giving us His Son so that we may be forgiven and have eternal life and RECEIVE Him as our Savior. Our main job at Christmas and every day is to RECEIVE Him and to KEEP receiving Him every day! Everything else that we give is really a reflection of the true Giver. He talked about how we should all have that "childlike" faith and be better at RECEIVING this GIFT of His Son. Children are AWESOME at receiving gifts (let me tell you). :) They don't say "Oh no - you shouldn't have. I don't deserve that. No thank you. You keep it." They don't get stressed out around the holidays...because they aren't worried about how many gifts to buy, and what's on the best sale, and what amazing meal they should prepare. Nope. Children just take it ALLL in. They get so excited about the coming of the gifts...they open their arms with no hesitation, no embarrassment, no delay....and sometimes they even forget to say "thank you." I loved the picture that this painted to me since our three girls are at a GREAT age for loving Christmas time...and so I can see all the joy and excitement and thrill they get from receiving a gift. Makes me wish I had that same joy, excitement, and thrill all the time when I think about RECEIVING the Ultimate Gift of Jesus. I don't need to be ashamed. I don't need to hold back. I just need to open my arms to Him like my girls do with no abandon. Receiving isn't always easy....like when I had to receive help when the girls were babies...it was hard...but I knew then, that I had a great need and that I HAD to except help or I would die! Seriously! :) And I think it's very similar with receiving Christ. It's not easy to take that step...until we recognize our NEED for Him...and just hold out our arms and say "THANK YOU JESUS!!!" God is seriously sooo amazing and sooo crazy about us! We are so so blessed!!!!

So yes, we have so much to celebrate this Christmas....and we had such a fun time celebrating this year with the girls because they really do show so much joy and excitement! We celebrated last Friday with Ryan's side of the family since Shane and Jody are with Jody's family today. And then we skyped Christmas with my family last night (THANK God for skype!!) and then we celebrated with just the girls and Ryan and I last night...and then had Kim and Kathy over for brunch and some more presents today. It was such a great Christmas! Hope you all had a great one too and that you're truly able to RECEIVE the gift of His Son this year and always. Just like I want our girls to get better at saying "thank you" after receiving a gift, I hope to get better at thanking Jesus by the way I choose to live each day. Merry Christmas everyone!

Em, Addy, ad Hailey by "their" Christmas trees.

The girls' new favorite "snack" after naps. Hot "Chalk - O - Latte" as they call it. :)

Grandpa and Grandma's dog Pepper also got a gift from the girls this year - a stylin' Christmas outfit to keep her warm. :)

Santa brought the girls new shake cups for Christmas. :) Which was funny because since we wanted to have shakes on Christmas Eve night, we had "Santa" come a little early with just one gift, the shake cups, in their stockings. We said Santa was going to make another trip that night but he only had time to drop off these cups. OH man....it was so funny b/c the girls were thrilled w/ their cups...but they were MORE concerned that Santa didn't put anything in our stockings!! They felt so bad for us and were asking so many questions about why he forgot to put something in our stockings. Even in the morning, the girls ran downstairs to see if Santa came to fill their stockings, and the first stocking they checked was mine! My little sweeties...

Christmas Eve tradition: New PJ's...with tutus of course. :) Winter Wonderland in our front yard