Nearly Christmas

We were with family last night, and nothing is as excited as a 5 1/2 year old! Lots of good food, (wish I could have enjoyed it) and lots of love , which I did enjoy. Christmas has always been the most wonderful time of year for me and our family. I have put up as many as 10 trees (scaled back now to five small ones), each one with a theme. I had a "cat" tree ( all ornaments cats), angel tree, snowman tree, bird tree, Santa tree, sheep tree, gingerbread/kitchen tree, a large tree with all shiny ornaments, and one with ornaments that were my parents and grandparents...my heirloom tree. I used to bake the entire month of December, making jam cake which was put in a lard stand and "soaked" with a liquid wrapped cloth for a month then iced with caramel icing. Fruit cake cookies, thumbprint and candy cane cookies, pfeffernesses, and of course, coconut cake. We would take these goodies to dinners at other's homes, and at Mama's and Grandma's, and of course, have an open house. All of this with three small children, but I never seemed to run out of energy... and it was all so much fun to get ready for Christmas. I really miss all this, the fun of cooking, sharing, having friends over, decorating everything in the house that does not move! This phase of my life is over, regardless of how this CT turns out and we find out tomorrow. Now the next generation has the dinners and does the baking, and it is OK...it just came sooner than I thought it would. Some things never change, that is the Christmas story ; I especially love reading Luke 2:16-19"so they (the shepherds) 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..."