Gratitude

So today I'm feeling grateful for the great Christmas we had. As some of you probably know, for the last few months Doug's been working on starting his own insurance agency. So that means we haven't exactly been raking in the cash so we knew we wouldn't have the financial resources to have a big fancy Christmas. (Not that we ever maxed out the credit cards to do Christmas in the past, but you get my meaning.) I have been extremely fortunate and have had a steady stream of transcription work to do, but there's still only so much I can do when I have two extremely energetic boys at home and have to oversee homework when Mary gets home in addition to all I have to do keeping the house at least moderately clean, laundry, etc.

However, we have been very blessed this Christmas by many of our friends and family. Some family members were more generous than they probably would have been in the past, which was nice. Doug helped out with a reading group at Mary's school and one of the other parents gave him her son's old Geotrax (spelling?) set, and it was in mint condition. The batteries even still worked. Another friend gave us a fancy marble track when they moved this past summer. (We hid it quite well for several months.) I think those two toys are the most popular with our kids, and we didn't have to pay a dime for them.

Another friend decided to be our Secret Santa and did "The 12 Days of Christmas" for us. Our kids were so excited waiting for the doorbell to ring every night. Whoever it was, they were tricky. I somehow missed them on a night I was sitting right in front of the living room window with the blinds open while I was having a Relief Society presidency meeting at my house. I had to walk about 5 steps to the door and still didn't get even a hint of who they were. We have no idea who they were, but they made the last couple weeks extremely enjoyable for our family.

Needless to say, we have been extremely blessed this year. I doubt our kids even realized that we spent a fraction of what we would normally spend on Christmas. If you were one of the
"helpers" mentioned above, please know we are very grateful.

Hopefully next year we'll be in a better position to help others. We enjoy that too.