Christmas with Oma

Christmas has come and gone and I have yet to mention any of it, well, except for my sofa set. Very materialistic of me.

I do want to capture Christmas 2008 before I lose memory of it, and trust me that happens fairly quick.

This year, Christmas was different than the usual Odom family Christmas. When Mike and I had Ariel, we had decided that we would stop travelling for Christmas. We would just stay at home with our little family and anyone who wanted to join us was more than welcome.

It was just easier. The thought of packing up all the gifts, then unpacking the gifts, just to re-pack them up again seemed a little tiresome. Plus, I thought this would be a great time for us to start some of our own traditions. We have tried many different ones over the years. Some we've held on to and some we have let go.

In the past, my mom usually comes up for a few hours and has Christmas dinner and visits, which is always nice.

This year was to be no different, except something happened.

What?

The First Presidency Christmas Devotional. Well, that's not new. Just the words spoken during it. It is always held the first Sunday in December and as usual, it was very good. We ALWAYS go to the church to watch this. I know, we can watch it from home, but for me, there is always something special about watching it in the chapel and hearing Silent Night at the end with other members (even though every year fewer members come together to watch it. This year, we were grateful to watch it with the missionary couple from our ward along with the Emmertson's and the Campbell's.)

On our way home, we were all reflecting aloud, as a family, what we had learned from the Prophet and apostles. I love doing this because we always hear something different, but at the same time it helps our family to start the Christmas season with the Savior in our hearts and mind, and reminds us that we need to keep Him at the center at all times. Our dear prophet gave me food for thought with his words, "Are we making room in our "inn" for the Savior?"

This year, we all felt a greater need to serve, but for me this year, I learned that service does not have to be something grand as long as it is "drawing hearts to the Savior or an act of kindness" as Pres. Eyring mentioned in his talk. I often think service needs to pointed outward away from our family, but this year, our family was reminded that sometimes the greatest service is needed within our own families, and with that the greatest lessons can be learned.

After hearing Pres. Monson's talk, Mike said all he could think of was his mom. Mike's mom lives alone with Mike invalid grandmother about 3 hours away. Because she is the sole care giver of Mike's grandmother, she seldom gets away and is lucky to be able to get away long enough to attend church. Due to this, she would be alone for Christmas.

Mike said he could not shake the fact that we needed to be with his mom on Christmas. That we should take Christmas to her. That we needed to break our "tradition" of staying at home and render service. Yes, service, not the kind we normally think of, but service just the same. He has never asked this of me, and I felt that if he felt that strong about it after hearing the words of the prophet, then we should listen.

So, that is just what we did, and we managed to keep it a secret from her.

It was our thought to leave early (5am) Christmas morning (we wanted the girls to open up the gifts from Santa at home since our car would not be able to hold all the stuff for Christmas dinner and Mike's mom's gifts along with the gifts she sent to us back so we could open them there with her), and arrive at Mike's mom at 8 am. We brought the entire dinner. I did not want Mike's mom to have to cook for us, so I preped all the food aside from the turkey the day before and put everything in throw away dishes and that way all that would need to be done was cook the food when we got there.

The girls were up early (Ariel at 2 am, but we managed to get her to go back to bed until 4am). We got the coolers and gifts loaded up and ended up on schedule. The funny thing is, with all the excitement, we forgot to get the camera out--so we have no pictures of Christmas morning except those engraved in our mind.

As we drove up to Oma's house, we were all excited and giddy. It was really fun. We decided to go up and ring the door bell and start singing Christmas carols. When she opened the door, she was very surprised!

We had a great Christmas. Once again, I am thankful for a prophets voice. I know that talk was inspired and I'm grateful that Mike felt prompted to not just listen to those words spoken by Pres. Monson, but to take them to heart and put action behind them.

I know it was one of the best Christmas' ever for our family. I know that we do need to reach out in the community and serve, but sometimes in our efforts of reaching out to the community, I forget to serve those right in my own family or home. I need to remember to balance it. I hope this year that our family can reach out together all year to those in need--whether it be those close to our hearts or those we don't know-- to be of more service to each other and to all of our neighbors. For when we do this the spirit of Christmas---the light of the Savior-- is not only felt in December, but all the year through.

***Here are a couple of pictures we took just before taking down the decorations. LOL. This first one seems to be our generic Christmas picture pose. I guess we will be able to see how we change over the years.

Here is a picture of our house. I tried to get Mike to put up the lights along the roof, but he wouldn't. So we didn't.