A Christmas recap.... sleigh bells, hockey, eating and such

I was going to write a whole thing about our Christmas, but I realize that would be fairly boring for most of you, so here are some highlights from a week of having family around....

- One of our church members has horses down by the river so we convinced him to take us on a sleigh ride.  The weather was nice... the setting was nice... it was fun.  I will remember the kids riding in the toboggans behind the sleigh as well as running up the valley edge with Matthew and Emily (two of Kurt's kids).  The warmth of the warming shack afterwards was nice too.

- I will remember Grandpa playing floor hockey with us that night in the gym.  I have never seen Laurie run that much in his life.  If the NHL expands by a few more teams and needs some players, he may have a shot!

- When the Pippus' went home.... the Mullers arrived.  It was really nice having the entire extended family from this area over for coffee on Saturday night.  Somehow, though we all live close together we rarely get together so that was nice.

- I enjoyed playing all sorts of games over the week too.... crokinole.... Apples to apples.... darts in my garage.....

- After everyone had gone home, Sari, the kids and I went to Minot for a few days.  Along the way, we went and saw the movie "Saving Mr Banks".   I am not much for movies and I am not much for Disney stuff, but (without saying too much) this movie reminded me how precious our family really is.  Thinking about our girls growing up made me cry.... and say some things to my kids that I need to say.  I hate growing up!  :)

I could go on and on about various things, but you likely don't care and none of it means as much to you as it does to me anyway, so let me say this...... I hope you had a fun, refreshing holiday.  I hope it was filled with love and joy.  If it was - cherish that and keep it going the rest of the year.  If it wasn't (and not all of our Christmases have been splendid ones), I pray that you will find joy, hope and love throughout the New year.  Better yet, I hope you supply those things for others.

Time is ticking and these days will be gone before you know it.  We can't change that.... but we can make sure that we make good use of our time so that when we look back we smile at what we had instead of being sad about what we missed.

That is how I will remember Christmas 2013.

Happy 2014!