I hope all of you have had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year. This Christmas season for us has been a little bit bittersweet. The downside of the season is, with the economy struggling my industry has struggled to keep busy and working. The upside of a down economy is, this is the first time in years that I have been able to spend a full two weeks of vacation with my family.
We started our vacation with a quick trip to Marco Island. I ran in the Marco Island 5 mile hill race with my friend Jason. This was a great time. The weather was wonderful and the run had a lot of nice scenery. The run event was then followed by a trip to Miami for a doctor's appointment with Cameron's Biomedical doctor. The appointment was uneventful, and things for Cameron are continuing to move positively. After our visit with Cameron's doctor, we spent the afternoon with friends of ours in South Beach enjoying lunch and the beach. After our day in Miami we were ready to come home and begin preparing for the Christmas celebration.
Kelly's Mom and her significant other Jack, spent several days with us prior to Christmas. It is always amazing to me how excited we get to see our family during the holidays. For the record I want everyone to know that we are very blessed, our family gets along great. The irony is that as much fun as it is to visit with our family and enjoy their company it is as much work as well(I'm sure my view is skewed by the policing of two young children). We spent several days enjoying all aspects of our family. We had brunch on Christmas Eve with Deb, Jack, Jeff, Jenny, Ava and Tyler. Then we opened presents and said farewell to Deb and Jack before they left to fly back to California. We then spent Christmas Eve evening with my parents at Summit Church's 5pm service. It was a great service and the most people I've ever seen in one service there. This was followed by dinner at my parents house along with present opening.
Now many of you with young children I hope will understand what is going to happen next. Once the present opening had been completed it was Kelly's and my job to round up all the presents the grandparents got for Hannah and Cameron, load them into the car and drive home. It is now 9:30 pm. Once we got home, the children got the cookies out for Santa along with the carrots for the reindeer and then read, "The Night Before Christmas." It is now 10:30 pm. Now I wish I could tell you that mother and I settle into bed for a long winter's nap, but someone has to "prepare" the house for the trampoline, scooter, bike and other presents Santa was bringing. Once we "prepared" the house for Santa's coming, yes you guessed it, bedtime for us on Christmas morning was approximately 1:00 am. Now for parents with older children this would not be a problem, but our kids still get excited about Santa coming. The oldest (Hannah) was up at 5:00 am, and as quickly as she got up, mom had her climb into bed with us and go back to sleep.
Christmas morning started about 7:30 am and went without a hitch. The kids opened their presents and enjoyed the small trampoline Santa brought them. Over the next several days our family spent a lot of time enjoying each other. We went to the park, and Hannah has been enjoying her new scooter and has started to ride her bike without training wheels. Cameron has been enjoying Veggie Tale DVDs, trampoline jumping and his playground. He hasn't quit figured out what to do with the bike he got yet.
As time went on Kelly and I decided it would be fun to take the kids to Busch Gardens during the break. If anyone reading this has not been to a theme park during the week between Christmas and New Year's let me explain the experience with one word, INSANE! We thought some people would be returning to work on the Monday after Christmas, so we would enjoy a semi-busy Busch Gardens for the day. Apparently 30,000 other people had the same idea we did. The experience was certainly crazy, but the kids enjoyed themselves, were extremely well behaved and Kelly and I did not fall asleep while driving home. The next several days have been spent enjoying each other's company, going to the gym and getting little things done that we never seem to have time for. In a couple of days I will go back to work and Kelly will endure the day to day grind of school, therapy and household management.
I will end this entry by wishing everyone a Happy New Year and my prayer to all of you that any resolutions you have made I hope you are able to accomplish. One of my favorite quotes that I was just introduced to recently helps me to continue in the areas I struggle and I hope it will do the same for you.
"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.”
by Charles R. Swindoll
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