The Material and The Spiritual

The night before Christmas Eve I cleaned the main level of our home in the middle of the night. My brother in law said "cleaning with little kids in the house is like trying to pick up in the middle of a tornado" and that's why sometimes its easier to loose the sleep than to clean during the day. Then the next day Christmas Eve, somehow I still had energy and decided to clean the entire basement for the heck of it. This turned out to be totally worth it, (even though none of our guests went downstairs) because I found the battery charger for my camera down there, in a place I never would have looked, which means, I have great pictures of this Christmas to share.

I also didn't have to share my camera with three year old Amy, because Santa brought her a new pink camera. I was a little disappointed it's only got 1.3 megapixels, but it totally makes up for that by letting you play games with head shots you've taken of people. We laughed so hard when Amy took a picture of Grandma face and put it on an animated bodies.

Our traditional Greek dinner turned out great, and I didn't burn anything. Happy tummies, happy faces.

Santa brought Transformers as promised, and so did Papa. :) Hunter and I spent hours yesterday mastering the auto bots. Usually action figures, not my thing, but a transformer is a whole 'nother fascinating story! We loved it!

Then later in the afternoon we all sat around the new pink table and broke out the Easy Bake cookie mix. Later that night Daddy joined in on the fun to help us make fondant covered cakes.

Daddy too was happy with his gift and for the first time in 10 years I managed to surprise him for Christmas, with something he wanted, needed, and loved. Much thanks to my brother in law for picking it out :)

All gifts this year were successful for us, no return shopping, I would say it's our best Christmas yet. But then I always have to bring the guilt into it, the guilt of gosh if we had such a great material Christmas (I've spent more this year than ever) shouldn't we feel guilty that we didn't have a more Christ-centered Christmas?

It's true, I do feel like my heart didn't receive that great revelation I've had other years when I've had a better focus on the Savior. Sure we spent some nights telling the story of the Nativity to our children, watching a Nativity show, and we anonymously dropped off a box of gifts to a neighbor in need, but I still feel like I"m going through the motions with my heart closed. I've always been an all or nothing kind of gal, and I'm sure it would be easier for me to say no gifts this year, we're going to focus on service, random acts of kindness, and learning about the Savior, but I'm not so sure that's the best idea.

I've got to find a balance between the material and spiritual Christmases. All too late I did google and find a wonderful blog with ideas to have a more Christ-centered Christmas. Maybe not quite too late though, maybe I'll roll this into my New Year Resolutions and call it finding ways to have a more Christ-centered year, after all, it doesn't have to be December to look for ways to serve others and have the true spirit of Christmas with us.

And just for fun. .  ..