Christmas 2008

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas together with your family. It was very special for us this year to have all of our children home. We enjoyed a delicous breakfast together. Afterwards we sang some Christmas carols, read the Christmas story and then Vern shared a challenge from the Word. We opened presents and enjoyed spending the day with each other. (There was also another meal in there.) We were also able to make some phone calls to our parents, grandmother, and a few of our siblings. Although we didn't spend the day with any of them we were thinking of them and the special place they have in our hearts and lives. It was a day where some special memories were made together.

Christmas 2007 PART2

Last night we had our Christmas here with Caleb and Kristina. We had a wonderful meal and made some great memories together, the only thing missing was our son Zachary. Since we were not planning on being in Chicago for Christmas I had some presents here for the kids. And all our stockings were here so the family enjoyed pulling out some treats from their stockings. On Christmas morning we watched Zachary enjoy his stocking as it was the only stocking I had brought with to Chicago as I was going to leave him a stocking to open on Christmas morning. Although things weren't how we had planned for Christmas, God did give us some really great times and wonderful memories. It had been a few years since we were in Chicago for Christmas and we are thankful for the times of connection we had with our family there. We also feel blessed as we have seen how God undertook for our dear daughter in healing her body from infection. Things could have been so much worse. We have also felt so much love and support from family and friends. We came home to several messages on our answering machine of people letting us know they were praying for Ruth. Thank-you for your words, notes, emails, and phone calls of encouragement. We hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas even if things weren't quite how you had them planned in your mind. We have so much to be thankful for.