Even though I still have four more days of “winter break” in my household, I’ve been reflecting on the highlights of this year’s Christmas time. (Yeah, I said it. Christmas.) Here they are, in no particular order.
1. I said Merry Christmas instead of happy holidays or have a good one or something else generic. I put away my fears of being politically incorrect and went straight for the big guns. Highlight: People replied Merry Christmas back to me and seemed genuinely happy when they said it .
2. On Christmas day I got to spend most of the day with my brother, Carl, and his family. We all live in the same town but never see each other. Weird. We should probably try to be better about that in 2012. Highlights: The time spent together, the laughter, and this picture of us together. 
3. Sean, my five-year old son, got a pair of light-up Cars shoes from his Uncle Carl and Auntie Amber. Sean had been working hard for nearly a month to save up for these shoes on his own. About three days before Christmas, he decided to give all his money (which had gotten down to about $8 because he decided to buy a yo-yo) to Africa instead “because they needed food”. Highlights: Sean’s unprompted willingness to give his money, sacrifice what he wanted, and the look on his face when he opened up these:
4. A couple days after Christmas the UPS man came to my door at about 6pm with a box for my husband and me. It came from New York. We don’t know anyone in or from New York. There was no note inside the box, but there was another strange-shaped box. The second I opened it, I gasped in glee! It was a bottle of South African wine called Herding Cats. My grandfather (a guy I am not super close with but love dearly because he’s my grandpa) had talked about this wine with me at our family reunion back in Summer. He told me the story about this wine, we laughed about it and I was generally intrigued by this mysterious wine called “Herding Cats”. My grandpa had taken that 10 minute conversation to heart and searched for a couple of months to find this wine for me. Highlight: I felt (and still feel) very special that he remembered our conversation, took intentional effort to find the wine and send it to me.
5. My daughter, Haley (3 years old), took on a love for baking. We did a lot of baking together. Highlight: Spending time in the kitchen with my daughter and teaching her how to bake. I enjoyed her enthusiasm with each “dumping” of ingredients into the bowls. She even learned how to use the hand-mixer.
6. Family time. There was a lot of family time spent together. I feel very lucky to have a wonderful family close enough to create memories:
