Snuggle

One of our family's Christmas traditions is to count down to Christmas by reading books with winter and Christmas themes. I wrap 23 of our books (in old newspapers, which we'll be recycling anyway), and we open one each day, and read it, until December 23. On the 24th, we unwrap the Bible and read Luke 2. This is a great tradition for a number of reasons: we get to read all of our Christmas books every December (if we just left them on the shelf in general circulation, we'd forget to read some of them), we can see that Christmas is getting closer, as our stack of wrapped books diminishes, and the kids don't go insane with waiting to open a gift--they each get to open one every 3 days.

The other night, as we were all snuggled together on the couch, with Scott reading the Christmas book of the day, I thought to myself, "who does this?" What a joy it is to be in a family, and what joy it is to sit quietly together at the end of the day, reminding ourselves what all the craziness is really about at this time of year. In that moment, I wished for someone to take our picture, so I could remember that feeling forever. I guess I'll just have to tuck that mental picture away in my heart for the future.