It's beginning to look alot like Christmas...finally!

This does not bode well for getting the house, in and out, ready for Christmas and festive looking. Good thing I have a wonderfully handy husband who's a wiz with tools and making do with whatever.
There! Is this better??

I love to decorate the tree with a "theme" since the older three have moved out and have their own families now to decorate their trees as they please. The last few years have been a snow theme but I'm thinking red and white with candy canes for next year.

So I mentally made the list and checked it twice and here's where we're at:

..annual trip to the mall to look at the Christmas decorations and maybe see the jolly old elf....check (however, the malls must be in a scrooge/grinch type way because the only Christmas decorations were around the jolly old elf's area)

..Christmas lights up on the house....check (no thanks to me, I had to make two trips to the store for lights, and return some once)

..Christmas tree bought, up, decorated....check (but we didn't go out in the woods to cut it this year-- GASP-- we went to a lot!)

..traditional pj's and books bought for the grandmunchkins....half a check (still working on the books)

..bought the book, puzzle, new toy, game for Christmas Eve family time....not even close

..Christmas making and buying done....another not even close (mittens to knit, simple quilts to stitch, jackets to sew, hats to knit, hmmm, what else do I have out there to work on?)

However! I am looking forward to Christmas!

We had a neat service in church yesterday. We celebrated the finality of an adoption in our church family. They've had the girls as foster children for 6 years and the adoption was final last week. My husband called them up to pray for their family before we celebrated with cake and punch. He said that our grandmunchkins other grandmother said when they were born, "I wasn't prepared to love them this much" and then when people asked Debby, (that would be me) after we got home from Albania with our new daughter, age 10 at the time, how it had gone and she told people that when they put Shega on her lap for the first time she was overwhelmed at the love she felt for her and the amazing fact that there was NO difference in the way she felt about Shega compared to when our older three were handed to her after their births. He said that this family probably felt the same and when God's Hand is in it, it is right. Pastor followed up with a verse in Romans and that we are adopted into God's family. The tears still flow everytime I think about that first moment I held Shega. I expected to love her, just not to that degree.

Which makes me think of something else yesterday we thought of. Because of Shega's handicap, we will always have a child for Christmas and so we won't be allowed to forget or bypass or dodge all of the Christmas preparations that I've seen older generations in the family do. Personally, I think that's a plus...God's way of keeping us seeing Christmas through a child's eyes.