with 3 more sleeps till Christmas...

Christmas is in three days. We have done a little wrapping, but have the majority left to do. Needless to say, my guest room is quite a disaster area. 

I was going to get some wrapping done today, but Graeme decided to start crawling Sunday night (yay!!!). And for some reason we have been all like, "Why baby proof? He's not moving." So, today was quick-let's-make-the-house-safe-as-fast-as-I-can day. Thanks to my dad, we even got a gate installed at the top of the steps. 



Anyway.

We are excited about Graeme's first Christmas. As much as we said, "We won't go crazy!" on his gifts, we did. We shopped for him over the course of the last few months a little at a time. Everything is so cute for him at this age and it was easy to buy little things here and there. So when we finally put everything all together, it was quite a pile of gifts! Something about it being his very first Christmas just made us want to buy all the things. Ha! 

I have been giving so much thought to how I want Christmas to be for him as he grows up. And I have a feeling we will just figure out what works as he grows and as we pray for wisdom in parenting him. We will always love to buy him things because we love him and that's a way to show him that. However, I never want him to think Christmas is all about getting presents. I want to teach him to give gifts to others before he thinks of himself and to help people in need. And I want him to never forget why we celebrate Christmas:  because we received the best gift ever when Jesus was born.

I pray that we can teach Graeme that he isn't entitled to anything, but that the people who love him choose to give him gifts out of that love as a way to represent God's love. I pray he is selfless and would be willing to give up anything for a friend. I pray he will rise above the consumerism of the world and realize if he has Jesus that is all he really needs.

And most of all I pray that I will learn all of these things myself because if I don't live like that, he won't learn how to either!

We have so much. So much more than we need. I know I am constantly guilty of what the Berenstein Bears called "The Gimmies."

I am so thankful for what we've been given over the past few years as we've built our beautiful home, but I know sometimes I forget to be thankful.

I forget to give away.
I forget to hold things loosely and treat our possessions as things that are going to fade away.

I want to be willing to leave all we have at the drop of a hat if God called us to do that. I really do want to say that I could do that. (I'm not sure I could right now, if I'm being authentic.) But I pray God will work on my heart and help me get to that place.


Because the only thing I need...the only ONE I need...well, that's Jesus.

Mary and Joseph named him Jesus, "Emmanuel"--which means

"God has come to live with us."

Because, of course, he had.

-The Jesus Storybook Bible