Good Day After Christmas folks!

I pray this finds you having been blessed in some way yesterday as we celebrated the birth of our Lord and Savior. I certainly was – in many ways! My biggest blessing of the day, however, was nothing tangible. Keep reading…I’ll share it with you later in the post!

Our Christmas Day festivities actually began at 12:01 am! We tried things a bit differently this year, because our day was going to be very full on account of this being my mother’s first year in a nursing home. So, we stayed awake until Christmas Day first began, and we started the day with my daughter reading THE Christmas story as told in the book of Luke. We followed that with opening our stockings and gifts. I think we ended up getting to bed around 2:30-ish.

We awoke around 7:00 to pop our breakfast casserole in the oven and make a crockpot of chili to have later in the evening. We had breakfast, got ourselves ready, loaded the car and headed out for a 2.5 hour trip to Virginia to have Christmas with my husband’s family. The weather was a bit iffy, as we were in an “ice storm warning” area, however it stayed east of us, and all we got was rain. Praise God! Along the trip to VA, the sun started to peek out of the clouds a bit, and we had the privilege of seeing a double rainbow! WOW – what a gift the Lord gave us on His birthday!

We shared a wonderful meal with our Virginia family, exchanged gifts and then headed home to go pick up my mother to bring over to our house for more Christmas celebrations. We filled our bellies with the chili that smelled divine by that point and ate yummy sweet treats followed by our third gift exchange of the day. We took mom back to the nursing home and then came back home for a quick game of Apples to Apples. That game is so much fun! I won by the way!! 🙂

The biggest blessing of my day came through an answered prayer. I have a friend in the middle of a marital separation right now. She was dreading some things concerning Christmas Day, and I prayed very specifically that God would end up making it a very blessed day for her in spite of the circumstances. He did it!!!! I received that news later Christmas Day evening, it was simply the “icing on the cake” of an already very blessed day!

Now, the festivities of Christmas are over, but the Gift of Christmas lives on forever. Thank you God for the gift of your Son!

Merry CHRISTmas blog family and friends!!!

Luke 2:1-20 (NIV)
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ[a] the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.