Celebrating the God Who Came to Be with Me

This Christmas season has been full of the usual stresses and the usual hustling and bustling about. But I have also been deeply humbled over the past 2 weeks as I've listened to Christmas carols that celebrate the fact that our God came to be with us.  I wrote about that in my Segullah post this month, in which I quote Erin Straza's way to combat getting to Christmas Day worn out and empty.  "To combat this," Straza says, "I look for special ways to be with the God who came to be with me."

It's tricky to do that with a busy schedule and 4 demanding children. I tend to get down on myself when I see friends' and neighbors' families doing truly charitable things during this season--arranging trips to Mexico to build homes for people, collecting and donating hats and scarves for cancer patients, distributing new gloves and hats and hot cocoa to the homeless people in a park in Salt Lake City, and so on.

All I can do at this moment in my life, is think. Think while I'm doing the dishes, think while I'm driving to the store, think while I'm rocking the 1-year-old. Think about my Savior and the truly glorious fact that He came to be with me.

I did manage to take a few pictures of our December so far . . . .

Decorating the tree

  

And undecorating the tree:

Sweetie's A.L.L class did a performance of Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Sweetie was Mrs. Crachit and she did a great job! I was impressed with how good the performance was.

 
 Sweetie's band concert:

We went to the local live nativity:

 And we've been watching at least one Christmas movie a week. Here we are gearing up for The Santa Clause:

 We've also been making a lot of gourmet s'mores over the stove, courtesy of J:

And in case you didn't know, there are 10 days left until Christmas: