Snippets of Christmas

The moments I love best.... making clove-studded oranges.  Adam was rolling his eyes and fluttering his eyelids with every deep breath.

 Emma Grace enjoying an early Christmas present.

 She was even kind enough to share it with her brother and sister.

 Decorating our house with snowflakes- marveling at the different creations our snips made while listening to The Nutcracker.

 Hot chocolate with marshmallows... so magical, someone took a picture to memorialize it.  (Adam, my shutterbug)

The crazy weeks of Christmas are coming.  We have something planned all but two days from now until  Christmas, and I like it that way.  I want to fill our days with joyful Christmas experiences and not think too much about the family moments and memories we will be missing out on in the weeks to come.  I want to be busy doing good, but I don't want to miss out on small moments that allow us to serve others.

Jason and I were driving downtown during our weekly date night.  It was raining pretty steadily.  We drove past a little girl carrying a kid-sized umbrella and a woman carrying at least 15 grocery bags.  While we were waiting for the light to turn green, I watched her set her bags down, readjust, and hoist them up again.  I told Jason to turn around and we offered them a ride.  It didn't really matter where they were going or how far we had to drive- nothing we had planned for the night seemed as important as helping this woman get her child and her load of groceries home.

She seemed too tired to politely decline our offer.  Instead she allowed us to load her groceries into our car, buckle her daughter into Leah's booster seat and settled into the seat next to her.  We only drove for a few minutes, but we got her home at least 30 minutes than she would have arrived otherwise.

And then we were on our way.  I don't know that she thought much of it, but my heart was warmed at the experience.  And those tiny snippets of service are what I want Christmas to be all about.