Merry Christmas!

It’s the day after Christmas
And throughout the house of Cornell,
All the children are sleeping
So, for mom, all is well.

Well, I hope everyone who reads this can look back at the last couple of days and think, “Yeah, we had a great Christmas.” I know we did. As of today, we have participated in many Christmas festivities and spent time with pretty much all our family and had a good time with all of it.

We saw Santa land at our church in a helicopter 2 Sundays ago. As we watched him be fixated on the helpicopters, we asked Nathan if he was going to fly helicopters in the army. He replied an emphatic, "Yes!"

On her last day of school before Christmas break, Sarah's class did their Luke 2 play for the parents. I was able to break away from work for a few minutes to watch the play, but could not stay for the rest of their class party. It was incredibly cute and Sarah was an angel along with 3 other friends from her class.

We spent Saturday at my sister's house with my parents and all the cousins. The cousins all exchanged books and we had a good afternoon of baking and decorating gingerbread cookies and just hanging out together.

On Christmas Eve we spent the day cleaning and finishing up some last minute shopping, then went to worship service at our church and had dinner at our house with Mike's mom and sister. Nathan was such a big boy and sat (or squirmed as the case may be) with us during the entire service. We had fajitas for dinner and they opened gifts with Nanny and Brooke.

Christmas Day was busy. Mike and I woke up and got our showers early. The kids didn't get up until around 8-8:30. They got to see their Santa gifts (Sarah got a big bike and Nathan got a train table) and then we did our Happy Birthday Jesus cake before stockings and the rest of the gifts. My parents arrived and then a couple of hours later the rest of my family arrived for a late lunch. In the evening, my aunt and her kids + families came over and we were all together for the evening. It was wonderful having everyone there.

Oh, and let the record reflect that I baked a crackless cheesecake for yesterday.

So now, it's the day after Christmas. December 26th. Nathan has been coughing the last few days and we were out of albuterol for the nebulizer so I got him in to see a nurse practitioner today. Almost 2 hours later, we left without the albuterol perscription, but we had one for amoxicillin for his strep throat. Ugh! And we were around 9 other children yesterday.

As I look back over the last month (while sitting here and cleaning out all my email I haven't checked all month) I realize I didn’t do as well as I had hoped I would this year about all the things I wanted to do with my kids around the Advent season. We started out good… reading a prophesy about Christ from the Old Testament and it’s fulfillment in the New Testament each day. But in the busyness of work, musicals, preparing to spend time with family and just life, we were not as good about it as I would have liked. Goodness… in our house, baby Jesus was late to Christmas. We forgot to add baby Jesus to the Advent calendar yesterday, but he made his appearance there today. Whew!

Good thing he was on time that first Christmas when He came over 2000 years ago. Galatians 4:4-5 says, “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.”

Did you get that? The “time had fully come.” He wasn’t early. He wasn’t late. He was right on time. Something that I haven't been in a long time. Thank you Jesus! Thank you that You do not let busyness get in the way of your business. Forgive us, Lord, when we do.