Merry Christmas to you and your Kin

The 24th day of December my daughter gave to me...... (my gifts to Jesus)

My Family.......  my handsome hunka hunka burnin love, my precious sonshines, my gorgeous daughter in love,  fun and loyal four legged fur babies....

I am a blessed silly girl...I truly don't deserve the wonderful people God has given me but I accept them with heartfelt gratitude. I hope I have handled them well and treat them with His grace and love. I know that sometimes when I look at them I well up with emotion, my heart filling up with so much love and pride that I think I might burst. (sometimes I do burst and it oozes out thru my fingertips and onto your screen!)  But Today I give them to Jesus for I know He will continue to bless them and keep them in the palm of His hands. That He will guide them thru life with it's ups and downs so that they may grow and learn to lean on Him and love Him more deeply.

This Christmas Eve may you feel the deep love and pride and grace that God has for you as you celebrate the birth of Sweet Baby Jesus.  He really does love me....and He really loves you too!

Merry Christmas....... may you have Joy and Laughter and oodles of Blessings in the coming year!

from my almost Mayberry little family to yours................. barra     oxoxoxoxoxo

Ghost of Christmas Past

On the 14th day of December my daughter gave to me....(my gifts to Jesus)

My Christmas Spirit....... the anticipation of everything Christmas, my love for decorating, the sweetness of traditions, the festive atmosphere, the movies & songs, Jesus laying in a manger ....... the Grinch and Ebeneezer Scrooge.

I love Christmas. I always have. From "Pucki", the elf who visited every year in Japan, where I grew up when I was teeny tiny (the original elf on a shelf), to even hanging the dreaded tinsel on the tree. Oh, how I hate tinsel. (probably because when we had tinsel growing up it was real metal and had to be saved and ironed... yes you heard that right...no wonder I hate it, right?) But everything else about Christmas, I love!  Then when I became a mommy we got to start our own traditions with two precious little boys. Oh what fun we had! This year though, something happened. The Grinch and Ebeneezer Scrooge came in the dark of night and stole my Christmas Spirit. They replaced it with apathy and "ehhh". The whole Christmas experience is changing for me. No more little ones to dazzle, tiny house constraints, working on Sundays, schedules to work around... basically an empty nest... it's been empty for awhile but I am feeling it this year like none other before. So here's where it got special for me last night.... Jesus came and sat with me in the light of the half decorated little chubby Christmas tree while I fussed and complained and cried.. (ok, some of that was due to Hormones). I've always known it but it really hit me last night that Christmas isn't about all the fluff of festivities or traditions or decorating. It's about me and Jesus and discovering once again the crazy, amazing love that Jesus has for me. That God, loved ME so much that he sent Jesus to not only die for me but to sit on my sofa with this hot mess of a woman dealing with a Holiday temper tantrum.

(vintage little girl with scrawny Christmas tree found on the streets of Pinterest)

Bonus photo of my little chubby Christmas tree hunted and gathered by 

my hunka hunka burnin love and littlest sonshine in a rain/sleet storm

Past ,Present & Future

On the 7th day of December my daughter gave to me..... (my gifts to Jesus)

My Past..... the olden days, things done that might have molded me, memories, unforgettable events.
The past... my past to be exact, was an interesting one. A good one. It molded me into who I am today, especially if I learned from any of my shenanigans growing up.  But it has also etched into me certain things that make me react in a different way than most. I was a Missionary kid and grew up in Japan... that's different, right? Well, with it comes a world view different from the normal Joe..the american Joe. To add to that, my Daddy went to live with Jesus when I was only 8 and living in Japan. My mom felt that God wanted her to stay and finish his work there so for 8 more years we lived, loved and laughed in Tokyo. That added a different perspective to life even more. I could've turned out really weird ...(ok, never mind....) So, in my weirdness, I have discovered that even thru tragedy and loneliness and even a sense of abandonment that might be hard to go thru at the time, Jesus was using all of those events and circumstances to grow me, mold me , shape me.  So today in the present I accept all of the things life hands me with the assurance that I will turn out alright if I just lean back and let Jesus mold me thru the hard times. That makes the future so bright that I might need some shades..after all my future has some gold paved roads in it !  I hope you can embrace the past, be present in the present, and hope for the future... because we are gonna be awesome after all of this character shaping molding!

(cute little pinterest cowboys of the past)