Christmas Past #8

Christmas Past #8 The year 2003, the Kids 7 yrs 10 months, 4 years old and 22 months.(when the pic was taken in November) This was the year we started the traditional fireplace Christmas photo.
You see Sweet Pea all smiling here in this shot, the only problem was she would have a complete melt down every time i took her into a portrait studio to try to get her picture taken. So I gave up and just dressed them up, the girls in there matching Old Navy jumpers and Mr Man in his Old Navy sweeter grabbed my camera and Boom simple as that, no one crying, screaming or trying to run away out of the studio.. Loaded the photo online added a boarder and ordered 100 plus prints stuffed them into Christmas cards and we were done .. Sounds easy no. LOL

Besides being the 1st Christmas of the traditional fireplace Christmas photo, it was also our 1st year in our New Church. It was sort of a hard Christmas that way and a good one at the same time. Our old church had a falling out in Aug of 2003 and the church sort of split. It was hard not being there for Christmas because our old church was the church i grew up in I was 6 years old my 1st Christmas there and this was my 1st year not doing a Christmas not program there,being with all the people i grew up with. BUT at the same time, I knew that was NOT where God wanted us, and he had lead us to a wonderful church, full of wonderful people, and a Pastor who preached the truth. The New church was a small church our old church had about 100 to 150 people our new one ran about 25 to 30. So there really wasn't a big big Sunday school to do a Sunday school program. There was an opening as a Sunday school teacher for the preschool age class though so I was still able to teach, though I only had 3 kids.
The tradition at our New church is to have a candle light service, where we sing Christmas song, read the story of the Birth of Jesus, sing more songs, then turn out all the lights and one by one everyone in the church comes up lights there candle and tells what Christmas means to them, which normally starts that way and then turns into a I'm thankful for sort of thing, it is really wonderful. Its a good time to praise God for all he has done, but also to talk about Christmas and family traditions and it is just a really meaningful time, and now that we have been there a few years, I look forward to that just as much as i use to the big Sunday school Christmas programs. We normally have the kids in the church get up and sing a song or two during that service also. but there are only about 9 kids from 1 to 11 years old and about 6 teenage kids.