Spending time with family

Hello everyone and Merry Christmas. This year, my wife and I have decided that we are doing Christmas a bit different. We are focusing on just spending time with our loved ones and forgetting all about the gift giving aspect of Christmas.

Time is one of the most important things that we have here in this world, so we are trying to be more conscious about how we are spending our time together. We are focusing more on making memories that will last a lifetime instead of gifts that do not last.

My parents have been here at our home for the past few days and then we are going to be going up to my sister's home tomorrow. It will be the first time in a very long time that my older brother has been to my sisters home when my parents and I have. As we have all gotten older and our families have grown, it has been hard to get together. Our oldest brother and his wife and daughter have been living in Japan for almost ten years now, so they wont be here. It will be cool if they are able to come back and visit some time, but I know they have been enjoying living in Japan. That was my favorite place to live growing up.

I got a new Christmas tree this year and it has turned out to be a great purchase. It was pretty expensive, so I was worried that it wouldn't be worth it because the tree that we had prior to this was really nice as well. The problem was that it was too large to be set up anywhere in our home except smack dab in the middle of the living room where our ceilings are their tallest. I think the tree was close to 12 feet tall when it had all the pieces on. Last year, we only set it up with two of the three sections so it could fit where we have our tree now. I really like this new tree though because it has colorful lights on it and you can switch the color to just be the white lights if you want.

We have collected some really cool decorations over the years. About 8 years ago, our dogs broke out of their kennels and knocked our tree down and ate most of our old decorations. It was sad because they ruined many of the decorations that our kids had made when they were really young, so it sucks that all those memories are gone. When you are younger and your kids are younger, you never really think about how meaningful things like handmade tree decorations are until they are gone. I am just glad that the dogs didnt ruin all of them.

Its so fun looking back at old decorations and reliving the memories associated with them. We usually get a few new decorations each year. This year, one of the new decorations that I got was the little pickle jar decoration. Our daughter loves pickles and one of her friends that lives in Tennessee sends her large jars of pickles for her birthday each year. I also bought a pack of Squishmallow ornaments because our nieces in Oregon love Squishmallows, so it reminds us of our time we spent with them.

Last night during the sunset, I took some shots of the moon. The next full moon is the day after Christmas, so it will be a special full moon. I am probably going to make a fire out in our backyard and we will spend time together under the moon as we prepare to go into this next year.

I hope you all have a great Christmas. Give your family and friends lots of love and hold them close. Time with friends and family is the best gift.