Merry Christmas to all! I couldn't sleep so I'm up a bit early this morning. Delaine and Anna are snoozing comfortably in their nice cozy beds. The weather has been very nice the last couple of days with no rain to speak of and temperatures in the 50's most days of the week. This year it's just Delaine, Anna and me for Christmas. Devin and Ryan stayed home in Wyoming and Tara and Zach stayed home in Las Vegas. It's really quiet in the house without the grand kids here, they always bring so much energy where ever they go! Mom stayed in New Mexico this year even though I tried to talk her into coming up, and she is at Uncle Darrel's house with his family and I'm sure having a great time. We opted out of traveling too, partly because of the weather but mostly because I have used up all my vacation time earlier this year. I'm thinking of saving a few days next year to take around Christmas time. Anyway, it certainly is nice to have Anna here with us! She is out of school for a couple of weeks then heads back on the 4th of January to begin her second semester. She's in her freshman year and so far is doing very well at BYUI. She changed her major from Animal Science to Speech Pathology, so she will have to transfer to a different college at some point to get her degree. She is hoping to transfer to BYU Provo to continue on that path, and so far her grades are what they need to be to qualify for the transfer. We just have to see if it can be done.
I can't help but think about past Christmas mornings when we were young living in our old two-story house on X avenue in LaGrande . . . the three of us boys would get so excited about the coming of Christmas morning! We usually had to go to our rooms early so Santa would be able to the come, but we rarely got right in bed. We would sit up talking and playing and waiting for Mom and Dad to go to bed. We would watch out the window for Santa to fly over and swear we saw him in his sleigh! Some years we would sneak back down stairs after Mom and Dad were well asleep to inspect our Christmas presents. Every year Santa would bring us some nice presents and leave them by the tree and we could hardly stand not knowing what was there. At times we were even naughty and would use a razor blade to open our presents so we could see what they contained, then we would carefully tape them back up so we could open them on Christmas morning. We were always excited to get up early and rip and tear! Once all the presents were open we usually had a nice big breakfast then spent the rest of the day playing with our gifts. One year we got an HO road race set, and I remember Dad and our uncles spent more time setting it up and playing with it than we did. Not that we didn't want to mind you, but they were having so much fun with it we couldn't get close.
One year I remember a small gift under the tree that came from Granddad Fuentes. It was small and had a question mark on it. It was mysterious in its size and the way it was wrapped with just plane white paper. I remember looking at it every day before Christmas trying to figure out what it could be. Christmas morning that was the first one I wanted to open up. When I opened it I discovered it was my pocket knife I had lost the summer before! All at once the memories of that summer came rushing in. We had been at Grandma and Granddad's place in Luna and Mel, Dale and I were playing out back around the grain storage building as we normally did. I forget what game were playing but I had gone into the storage building and Mel locked me in. I couldn't open the door from the inside and nearly panicked! The door had a screen window in it that let the air in and I had a pocket knife, so I pulled it out and cut the screen so I could unlock the door and free myself. I spun around and stabbed the knife into a bag of grain and run free promptly forgetting about the knife until that Christmas morning. Guess what? I never used my knife to damage anyone's property again and I remember it to this day?
I love Christmas! Maybe next year we can all be together again . . . may we always remember the true meaning of Christmas and my we work to keep "Christ" in our lives this time of year and all year long!
Merry Christmas!
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