Joel thought it would be nice to teach Liam who the real Saint Nick was, and after being gifted books from VoM of Saint Patrick and Saint Valentinus... well, we bought a Saint Nicholas book from them too. Unfortunately, it is lost in the bowels of the USPS system. No matter, because I am not necessarily a shopper to begin with, and hate crowds and parking nightmares, so I did all my shopping via internet this year-- long story short... he hasn't really seen a long line of kids waiting to sit in Santa's lap this year. And my sister isn't here to take the boys as she has the past three years...
(2012)
(2011)
(2010)
What about Aiden? Doesn't he know who Santa is?? Well, I think he is still having nightmares of when my uncle played "Santa" last Christmas Eve at the Greenbank gathering...
Does that mean we won't do any gifts? Well, no... though my husband would be quite content with one/child. Maybe someday I think I would like to tie the gift-giving into the Three Wisemen a bit. (Have you heard of that approach??) But Liam has had fun helping me wrap a few gifts, and as he gets excited about the approach of Christmas and Christ's birth, it has been fun to watch his sweet spirit pour out generously, by giving to other people. So we are teaching him that Christmas is about giving, not receiving (though every time he talks about Katie, he still talks about "little itty bitty legos"). Yesterday, he even reminded me of John 3:16, and how God gave us His Son, so we need to give Him our hearts... a lesson he learned from his Sunday School program :)
Day 4... Giving Generously as unto the Lord
Through our church, we took a nice tote laden with goods to our elderly neighbor who can't get around so easily.I try to have a few dollars in my jacket for everytime we pass by a Salvation Army bucket. We also baked up a nice selection of goodies, and then passed them out to some of our neighbors. He even tried to give one of them a gift bag filled with some of his most treasured things (school book, crayons and colored pencils, a game, his newest Christmas cd, a Bible, and some snacks). It made my heart melt. She was sneaky enough to thank him profusely, then fill up the gift bag with a couple books for him, and send him back out the door with his and her gift both ;)
And last night, after generously picking out some special things to give to his brother and wrapping them up, he also decided to make his own "carriage boat" and "wear a winter hat like Noah" and go about giving gifts to little boys and girls that don't have any (and maybe a cousin or friend too :)
(I've currently misplaced the camera, but will try to put those pics up later!)
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