It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

I love Christmas time! I love the spirit in the air; I love all the lights; I love the food; I love the giving! I love the music! I just LOVE Christmas!

Christmas is always my favorite time of year for so many reasons. I have always had such wonderful memories at Christmas. My family has always made Christmas day be all about our family. Growing up, I always looked forward to Christmas, not just for the presents, but also for spending a whole day with my family. Especially my mom and dad (and in the last 10 years with my little brother too). My mom and dad have always been busy at different times, so when we had time together as a family, it wasn't very often or for very long. But at Christmas it was all day! This year, things are going to start changing because I have my own family: me and Keith. We are going to celebrate Christmas together on Christmas Eve because he works on Christmas day. Christmas day I will be with my family (and hopefully Keith will get to stop by even though he will be working for 24 hours). The day after Christmas we will be with my other family...aka Keith's family. I am super excited! And I know Christmas may change every year but it was always be about family.

I also love getting to celebrate with my few close friends during the Christmas season. We all celebrate birthday's this time of year as well, so there is definitely plenty to celebrate! To me, it's not so much about the getting, but about the giving and spending time with people we love!

I love decorating for Christmas. I love the colors! I always had so much fun growing up decorating the tree with my family. We always have ornaments with lots of meaning to us. This year, Keith and I have a tree of our own and we have spent some time last year and this year building a nice collection of our own personal ornaments. We bought quite a few on our honeymoon in Williamsburg, VA because they have a nice big Christmas Mouse store that I just love!

I also love the music at Christmas time! It's pretty much all I listen to this time of year! The radio plays so many wonderful Christmas songs, old and new, and I also have a few favorite CDs such as my classic Hanson Christmas CD called Snowed in fron 1997 and Josh Groban's wonderful Christmas CD Noel (Which we listed to while decorating our tree)

I also love to wrap Christmas presents. I always have so much fun choosing the paper and the ribbons and trying to wrap gifts creatively. This year I haven't done quite as much unique wrappings as I have done in the past , but I have still had lots of fun!

I am so excited about this Christmas because it is my first Christmas married to Keith! He is so wonderful and I am super excited about the Christmas memories we will start making this year:)

Then there is the things I love most about Christmas: The real reason we should celebrate - the birth of Christ! In order for Christ to come to earth to die for us, He had to be born first! And He also had to live the life of righteousness that we cannot live so that we can have righteousness through Him! It's so amazing to thing about the miracle which happened over 2000 years ago when God became a man; Emmanuel, God with us; God incarnate; Fully God; Fully Man; Perfect; Divine. He gave up so much for us in coming to earth! Let's celebrate Him this Christmas time far above everything else!