What a wonderful day it has been! I always find it hard being away from family on Christmas day but today was a really nice day with the Happy Husbands family and it felt like Christmas!

After working yesterday and then attending the 5pm Children’s Chrismas Eve Service (well I obviously did more than just attend this service – I’ve got some great pictures but for Duty of Care reasons I can’t post them here) and then the 11pm service last night and making some dessert and staters for lunch today we fell into bed last night ready for Christmas! This morning it was great to start the day together with a time of prayer before getting up and opening some Christmas presents from each other and my family in Sydney. We headed over to the in-laws place in the late morning to share presents there and have lunch and it was all quite lovely.

Presents given (and we hope received) on both sides of the family were incredibly thoughtful. I felt it last year and again this year, and perhaps its because we are all adults now, that the gifts have been very thoughtful and as a consequence so generous. I feel as though it’s how gift-giving is meant to be; somehow it feels less materialistic and more an act of love where the joy of giving is stronger than the fun of receiving. No doubt our parents have always had this attitude and certainly we have both been blessed with very loving and generous parents. Now that we each have 2 adults siblings (as well as being adults ourselves) the sense of love, family and blessing is all the stronger and it makes Christmas a really special time. I feel like I appreciate more what a gift really is, and seeing as at Christmas we celebrate the ultimate gift of Jesus – it’s all a great thing!

Here are some pics of the day, mainly for my families benefit in Sydney.

Getting the spread ready…

the tabel looked lovely

ready to eat!

Merry Christmas everyone & God Bless

Merry Christmas!

May you have a meaningful and wonderful day tomorrow and take the time to reflect on Jesus’ birth, the reason for our celebrations!

God Bless,

Lou & Mark

I picked up a fabulous book by Dr. Seuss today. It’s called ‘Oh Baby, the Places You’ll Go! A book to be read in Utero’.

It begins and ends as so…

“Baby, Oh baby,
the places you’ll go!
The worlds you will visit!
The friends you will know!

……

You’ll find that this world’s
a great place to begin,
but it could use some help -
which is where you come in.

So now, as my voice
burble-urps in your ear -
with a bump-thumpy sound
that is not very clear -
the words I am saying
you hear in your heart,
and know that I wish you
the very best start.

It’s a scrumptulous world
and it’s ready to meet you.
And as for myself…

well…
I can’t wait to mee you!”

___

My sentiments exactly!

While the raining is pouring (bucketing!) down I thought I’d take the opportunity to post some pics of our Christmas Tree. This is the first year, since moving to Melbourne in 2002, that I have had a real Christmas tree at home and it is FANTASTIC!

This is not a great picture of me, or the tree but it’s our tree and we love it anyway…. I think the same can be said about me (from HH’s perspective anyway!)

My darling husband was amazing supportive, if a bit bewildered by, my enthusiasm for Christmas but he got the tree, helped deocrate it and even appreciated the ‘Christmas Candle’ I bought (and light most nights)!

We started a new tradition this year. On the first Sunday of the month we invited some friends over to ‘dress the Christmas tree’ and have some Christmas snacks. If you think our tree looks like it was dressed by kids then that’s because it was and we loved it!

Some close up pics of the tree

and now, with only 3 sleeps til Christmas, we have some pressies under the tree too!!

Well temping seems to be a distraction for me again today, so in between answering phone calls I have been playing around online and came across a couple of Chinese birth charts which are supposed to predict your babies gender. According to one chart we are having a girl and according to another, a boy. I hope this doesn’t mean we are having twins and noone has noticed – ha ha!!

I am not sure if there is anyone out there anymore…and quite frankly I don’t blame you if you have long given up on my blogging. I am sorry!! The last 3 weeks I have been offline as my computer spontaneously had a software & hardware failure. However, that only accounts for the past 3 weeks…the many before that, well what can I say? I have been too busy living life to write about it. Ouch….that’s a bit lame (and not entirely true)…

How are you?

In the past couple of months life has continued on for us – my belly is now starting to pop out, but the little bub is pretty quiet. Not quite what I was expecting at 23weeks but perhaps it’s good not to have too many expectations about this whole adventure.

We have continued our househunting search but to no avail. Still waiting to see what and where God has in store for us and hoping, hoping, hoping that the ‘something’ might eventuate before April, but it’s not looking that good. Oh well…

Christmas is now only a few sleeps away so life has been busy…funnily enough working for a church in Children & Families Ministry makes Christmas a pretty full on time – but it’s a blessing to be able to be involved with sharing the message of Christmas to many who may not hear or think about Jesus at any other time during the year, or even this season. I have some lovely pics of our recent services and end of year celebrations but it’s probably not within the duty of care guidelines for me to put them up here. You’ll just have to use your imagination ;)

I wish there was more to say but trying to sum up a few months and make it interesting isn’t easy and I’m particularly poor on that front.

I will do my best to post more often from now on but for the time being, if you are there – thanks for sticking with me!!

God Bless,
Lou