Last Christmas in Springboro

Last year we imagined it would be our last one here in Springboro, OH, not because of my breast cancer diagnosis but because we thought the WonderVan would be done and we wouldn’t be living here. Over the past 2 years I’ve been selling, packing up or giving away everything including our kitchen table, dishes and Christmas decorations/tree!! However, although the WonderVan is going to be a true WONDER, it’s not quite done yet! John works on it tirelessly and I’m truly in awe of the details and engineering wonder this is going to be when all is said and done!

Because of the scarcity of things we now have in the house, my home has zero holiday decorations!!

 

I did however buy festive paper plates to eat on our card table!! 

I’m reminded that Christmas is not about any of the material bling (although it’s so fun to look at especially at my Fun-in-Laws house…aahemmm, Lorna Miller, a direct descendant of Santa himself!!) but for me it’s about remembering Jesus’ birth, my beloved Jewish Messiah who came to earth exactly as promised in the holy books of Isaiah and Micah! And having no secular distractions helped me keep that perspective this year.

It’s also about being with loved ones. This year I got lots of time with my kids and I’m so grateful!

We also got to spend it with some dear friends, the Slanakers!! 

This little bundle of joy got lots of loving and saw Santa many times including 2 of them being her grandpas!!

I also carried on my tradition of making baked children, as I call them, AKA gingerbread men!!

And we keep the tradition of the kids going out into the community and finding some folks in need and blessing them! It truly was a year of Gratitude!

One of my sweetest and mostest precious gifts was time with my granddaughter. We had our first Granita and Papa John sleep over and what a better way to punctuate it than with the tasting of a lemon! This girl knows the best fruit when she tastes it!! How appropriate that an Italian Granita feeds grandchild 🍋 lemon and she loved it! She literally said, ‘Yummmm’ after making a sour face and going back for more! 

Then as per our tradition, John and I spent Christmas Day out in nature. This year we paddled in our new canoe and hiked on an island in Caesar Creek where John camped 45 years ago!!

To wind up the Christmas season we enjoyed seeing John’s sister, Maria. Sadly she’s the only one of his family we get to enjoy but that’s where we praise God for friends and family we DO get the gift of time with. God provides and heals in ways we never expected to need yet here we are incredibly blessed! We can all choose GRATITUDE if we focus our hearts and minds on it from a Heavenly perspective.