This Christmas

If you've been reading for awhile, then you know this is going to be our first Christmas in the new house.

This is the first year that we've had room for our tree and haven't had to stash furniture away in storage while it's up. It's also the first year that we have a porch on which we could hang lights. 

And, this is the first Christmas that we've ever had a mantle to hang our stockings on. 

It seems like such a small thing, but the kids have never experienced a decorated home.

We've always made do with what we had, and in some years past that meant 6 people in a tiny 2 bedroom house with no heat and a roof literally caving in on us. 

Those years, it was all we could do to put up a tiny tin foil tree and hope it was enough to quell the overwhelming feeling that they were lacking something.
Luckily, the kids just didn't seem to know any better back then.
But now they see the things that they missed out on in Christmas' past, and they look at every detail with honest amazement. 

Each small thing is a surprise, from the twinkling lights to the fact that we actually have stockings for everyone this year.

They don't even remember the year we had no heat, or the year the roof gave way around our picture window and the rain fell in sheets on our dining room table.

The year Daddy sold some of his instruments to preserve what little we could of Christmas is non-existent in their minds, and I'm glad for that.

I would never purposely put my kids through hardship, but the lessons we all take with us from having done so are priceless, because the one thing we have all learned from this is to not take things for granted, and to appreciate the things we have and cherish even more the things that are given to us.

Not only do we all have our health and our loved ones near, but this year we will also have joy, and because of that, this Christmas is going to be epic.