Christmas Eve

In our family, we have worked our way through many ideas as to how to handle Christmas. Ray grew up with gift opening at midnight on Christmas Eve. My family opened them on Christmas Day.

When the boys were little we went my way: opening them on Christmas morning. It made more sense that way, since they were too small to stay up late. Then when they got older and we were getting together with my family on Christmas Day we began to change our traditions. Now we opened our families gifts on Christmas Eve, after coming home from the Christmas Eve service. This is about 9:00 pm. The boys end up going to bed at midnight. And then they sleep in the next morning, while I get up and begin the turkey preparations.

Another change we made a few years ago, was to celebrate St. Nicholas Day. It has always bothered me how the boys were so focused on Santa Claus. No matter what we did, because we did Santa Claus, they always looked forward to the gifts. This took the focus off Jesus.

A few years ago, I heard about St. Nicholas Day - December 6. I loved the idea!! So now we celebrate St. Nicholas on his day. They put out their stockings the night before, and then the next day is all about St. Nicholas. Just a simple day. They have all month to enjoy their gifts.

Then after that is over, we begin focusing on the "Reason for the Season - Jesus". Through the rest of the month, we do a variety of Christmas activities. One thing we did this year for the first time was sending gifts to other countries. We got the World Vision gift catalogue and the kids poured over that for days! They were each given $100 to spend and it took a lot of thought to decide how to stretch their money to cover as many people as possible. They were very excited and earnest in their discussions and final decisions.

World Vision Tree

Christmas Eve, the children were each given their envelopes from World Vision and they got to hang their ornament on the World Vision tree on our kitchen wall. To add to this, we bought my parents and my sister's family gifts, also. My sister received 25 coats, hats, gloves for children and my parents had the pleasure of immunizing an entire community!

After that was done the children grouped in the livingroom and we did our gift exchange.

"I'm A Present," said Cooper

It's Life!!

The story behind this gift is what Cassidy did this summer. He went to a friend's house for the night while we were at an adoption seminar. He played the game of life *once*, and when he came home he reproduced the game *perfectly* from memory. He and his brothers then proceeded to play this game over the last few months!! It was such a pleasure, in a such a materialistic world, to see our children cluster around a loved, but wrinkled sheet of paper, to play Life, with the most unlikely game pieces!

Homemade Life

A Gift From Cooper to Honey

Cooper is my cutie. He is such a loving little boy. Ever since I can remember he has called me, "Honey." I don't use that term, nor does Ray, so I don't know where he gets it from. He doesn't often call me 'Mummy'. I have always liked the fact that he has his own name for me. It is very sweet.

The other day I suddenly realized where it probably came from. When he was tiny, he had two favourite movies - we are talking about the time between 2 and 3 years of age. They were Matilda and Black Beauty. He would ask for his movies by these names: 'horse' or 'honey'.

In the movie 'Matilda', there is a little girl and her beloved teacher, Miss Honey. It dawned on me the other day, that there is a good chance that in his subconscious he thinks of me as the Miss Honey in his life - and he is the Matilda. Might sound far fetched but in a little boys mind where his mummy is the one who does everything for him, it seems reasonable. All the same I am his 'honey'. *smile*

Dancing With Delight

Briton was thrilled with Memere's gift of bulky crayons! He loves to colour.

Briton Helping Daddy With His Stocking

When we were in California Cooper played with one of these at the Flight Simulator where Dane was flying.

Cassidy is reading the book, "The Great Brain," and on Christmas Eve he came to me and asked me what an 'erector set' was (this was mentioned in the book) - well, actually, he came and asked me what a 'rectal set' was. We all had a laugh and then I gave him the correct vocabulary!! *grin* I explained what it was. It was very exciting that night when he opened his gift and found he had received an erector set. And no, he did not find out early. I had wrapped it when I brought it home, so there was no knowing ahead of time. Just a neat coincidence!

Dane is our resident pilot. He was thrilled with his remote control F15 (I think that is what it is).