On the Eve of Christmas ‘09

I can’t believe all that has happened to fill up time in the last two weeks.  I haven’t spent any time blogging for a while but I can’t forget to mention how we spent our Christmas holiday.

On the eve of Christmas Eve, we went to the Mesa Temple and walked around looking at the lights.  We had left to go as soon as Jared got off of work at 4:30 which was a really good thing because by the time we left, I was feeling claustrophobic from all of the people getting in my personal space bubble.

Here is what outside looked like with the lighted palm trees….

 

Inside the visitor’s center they have a huge display of nativities from around the world.  It is quite an expansive collection, I couldn’t resist posting a couple of my pictures….

     

Here is one of the two Mary and Joseph life-sized nativities out-side…. As I looked at this display with Mary riding a donkey thinking about her about to have a baby (which they should have made her stomach look at least a little bigger in my opinion), I thought about her great faith in Heavenly Father to carry a child who would be a son of God and also how frightening such a responsibility would be.  Just having children of Heavenly Father’s come and be my own is scary enough as it is because of the hopes I have for them to chose to follow Heavenly Father’s plan and do those things that are necessary for them to return to Him someday.  It also reminded me of how precious life really is and what a gift each person’s life is not just on earth, but eternally.  I think that is the whole point of Christmas that Christ loved all of us so much that He came and gave His life for our lives….our eternal lives.  Who am I not to be eternally grateful for such a sacrifice?

Afterwards….we went home and read the Christmas story out of the Bible while having hot chocolate and cookies and then Jared and Christian had a sleepover with the Christmas tree.

   

I always wanted to sleep under the Christmas tree as a little girl so we thought we’d make it a tradition.  Christian loved it.