This will be my last blog I write before Christmas as I will be taking Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off next week, and so I want to take this opportunity to wish all of you a Very Merry Christmas!\u00a0 I truly hope all of you have the most amazing Christmas ever, full of love, laughter, and cheer.\u00a0 \u00a0Christmas is such an amazing holiday.\u00a0 Tonight I spent the evening loading old photos onto a digital picture frame to send to my son, who is serving a mission for our church and thus won\u2019t be able to be home this year for Christmas.\u00a0 I went back in time and loaded over ten years of past Christmas Eve and Christmas Day photos for him, along with photos of other holidays, and vacations, and random fun photos.\u00a0 As I loaded the old Christmas photos onto the frame I marveled at how each year was the same pattern of tradition. Reading the story of the Savior\u2019s birth from the Bible.\u00a0 Having all the children act out the nativity scene in their cute little costumes.\u00a0 The reading of Twas the Night Before Christmas, followed by singing Christmas carols until everyone is sung out.\u00a0 And always ending on Silent Night, my personal favorite of the Christmas carols.\u00a0 Then after writing a note to Santa and leaving a plate of cookies, the children go to bed to wait for the arrival of Santa Claus and his reindeer.\u00a0 The next morning we wake up and have Danish and egg nog before we line the kids up, youngest to oldest, and then they come down the stairs in that order and make a surprise face while mom and dad snap away on the camera.\u00a0 Year after year there were photos of these events.\u00a0 It was so fun to go through and see them all and each year brought back a flood of good memories.\u00a0 It is amazing how Christmas allows us to put the world aside and just enjoy the holiday.\u00a0 The memories of Christmas are something I will treasure forever.\u00a0 I am so grateful for this special time of year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year I have to admit that the thing I am most excited for is the phone call home that I get to have from my son Dalton.\u00a0 Missionaries are allowed to call home to talk to their families just twice each year.\u00a0 Once on Mother\u2019s Day and once on Christmas Day.\u00a0 I am SO EXCITED to get the chance to talk to him!\u00a0 Rollin and Ashley and I are counting down the minutes until that phone call comes.\u00a0 We miss him so much it is hard to even describe, especially at Christmas.\u00a0 But poor Ashley, not only is there no one to line up at the top of the stairs with Christmas morning to walk down and look surprised, but this year she won\u2019t be able to walk down the stairs at all\u2026 so traditions will be hard to uphold this year, but we will do the best that we can to do all the traditions that we can.\u00a0 We love tradition at our house.\u00a0 Perhaps traditions represent some semblance of certainty in a world that is so full of uncertainty.\u00a0 Whatever the reason, we value tradition very much in our family.<\/p>\n
I truly wish each of you and your families an amazing Christmas Eve and Christmas Day next week.\u00a0 May Santa bring each of you the presents you wished for, and may God grant you the blessings you and your family stand in need of.<\/p>\n
May you have the gladness of Christmas which is hope,<\/span><\/p>\n The Spirit of Christmas which is peace,<\/span><\/p>\n and the heart of Christmas which is love.<\/span><\/p>\n MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!<\/span><\/p>\n With Love, This will be my last blog I write before Christmas as I will be taking Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off next week, and so I want to take this opportunity to wish all of you a Very Merry Christmas!\u00a0 I truly hope all of you have the most amazing Christmas ever, full of love, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[101,105,348,179,350,231,35,80,351,349,352],"class_list":["post-2073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ashley","tag-christmas","tag-christmas-eve","tag-dalton","tag-good-will","tag-hope","tag-love","tag-mission","tag-missionary","tag-peace","tag-spirit-of-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2073"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2081,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073\/revisions\/2081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAmy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"