It truly is the most wonderful time of the year. I'm sitting here with the tree all lit up, Christmas decorations up, lights on the house, and wishing the fire in the fireplace was lit. That's ok, it's almost bed time anyway. With the exception of one gift, I finished the shopping today. Yea! I shopped all morning while Justin put lights in the hedges out front, then I spent an hour wrapping all of my purchases. We ate lunch, and I sat down to relax for a minute. Suddenly I had a thought. We "adopted" 2 kids through our church to buy them Christmas presents. I thought the presents were due tomorrow at church, but I wanted to check, just in case. Sure enough, there on the paper it said, "Drop off by Saturday, December 5th at 4:00 pm". Um, it was 2:50, and I hadn't bought the gifts for the kids yet. Ok, no need to panic. "Justin, we need to go NOW to buy these gifts." Of course, he was in the middle of gluing down the thresholds between our living room and kitchen. So he finished and we rushed to Wal-Mart to shop. He had the older boy (got to pick out a bike!!) and I had the baby boy. Of course, Wal-Mart is a madhouse...of course it is!! We rushed as much as we could, then made it to Katy Christian Ministries at 3:58 (Justin was riding the bike into the store). After we barely got our gifts in, the ladies that were volunteering asked us if we wanted to see all the donations. It was amazing. A room the size of a small store was packed to the brim with bikes, toys, clothes, and so many other gifts. It really made me glad that we had decided to forgo gifts to each other and do this instead. It wasn't just us, though. It was so incredible to see that so many families, so many people had come together during these hard financial times to give to someone else. In a time where so many people are looking out for number one, this really put the spirit of Christmas back in perspective. In fact, Justin said we could adopt 4 next year. Hopefully we'll get to it before the day they are due. Oops.
By the way, we really enjoyed our trip to Vegas. We had a great time with Amy and Danny, and it was a great first visit for the Warrens. If you ever get a chance to see Cirque du Soleil's Ka, you should. It was amazing. It was much different from the other Cirque's, but it was great. Of course, we had to return to the real world, but this week ended with about 3 inches of snow yesterday. Some of our students had never seen snow before, so it was so exciting to see their reactions. They were laughing, screaming, and a few said, "This has been the best day of my life!" It was my reminder to stop complaining about not getting let out of school and just enjoy those first moments with the kids who wouldn't have been anywhere else.
I hope that everyone has a wonderful Christmas and that it is filled with laughter, love, time with family and friends, and full of the same joy as those students enjoying such a rare event in Texas.
