It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

(Our Christmas wreath on our front door)

Remember how I love Christmas?! Well, here we are again already. I can't believe we are already a week into December!

This last weekend we had one of our girl's sleepovers (which was so fun again, by the way, with 10 girls under 12.) On the way to the sleepover I went to pick up the pizza and I had one of my nieces with me. We had to wait a few minutes for the pizza and while we were waiting, my cute 5 year old niece kept singing, "It's the most wonderful time of the year" over and over. We had been listening to Christmas music in the car and I guess that was what stuck with her! It was so sweet.

I have thought a lot about that phrase since then and how, for me, it really is "the most wonderful time of the year." I started memorizing "The Living Christ" last week and I love the phrasing about Christ in that document. I was thinking as I was memorizing this weekend the He is the reason it is the most wonderful time of the year.

As much as I love the Christmas music, the decorations, the parties, the food (especially the food...), the reason I love December is because it gives me so much more of an opportunity to ponder about Christ and His life and sacrifice. I love that all over are words like "joy," "peace," "hope," and "rejoice." All of those hopeful words are because of His life and what He did for all of us!

Here are the phrases that struck me this weekend as I was memorizing:

As we commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ two millennia ago, we offer our testimony of the reality of His matchless life and the infinite virtue of His great atoning sacrifice…


He is the light, the life, and the hope of the world. His way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come. God be thanked for the matchless gift of His divine Son.

Aren't those beautiful phrases? I love the whole thing of course, but those were the ones that stood out to me this weekend as I was studying it. His life and sacrifice are the greatest gift we will ever receive!

I thought I would again include a few of the Christmas decorations at my house, mostly because I like to look back each year and see what my decorations looked like:

We have done a few fun Christmas things this year, but Jen has the pictures on her camera at work, so I will write about those later.

I did want to end with a few pictures I took on Friday when we went to the Festival of Trees:

This was one of my favorite trees, mostly because I loved that it has many of those wonderful words I was talking about before.

I thought this was the most inventive tree--a snowman Christmas tree!

This one reminded me of my sis-in-law Stace since it was all purple--this one is for you Stace!

So, this picture is lopsided, but I had to put it in because I loved this house, especially the entryway with the big candy canes!

Check out this gingerbread village. Can you imagine the hours it must have taken to make that!

I hope you have a wonderful December!

P.S. Look below for a post I wrote three weeks ago and never posted!