Decorations are in order!

I cannot remember a time when I enjoyed our Christmas decorations as much as I did this year.  That sentence should be changed to ...I can't remember a time when we left our Christmas decorations up clear to 2 days ago AND we enjoyed every minute!  I did go ahead and leave the garland over the mirror because we both enjoyed it so much, so we just said to each other...Well, why not?!  Let's just leave it up.  And so we did.  I just plugged my little camera in and I will try, after such a long time of not posting pictures, to post one.

It was quite a feat to pack all of the things and take the tree down.  There were several smaller boxes so I ended up combining them and have most things in totes.  The big feat, for which I gave myself a gold star, was hauling it all to the garage and hefting it up on shelves...all in one area.  Easy to find and all ready for next year.  I want the tree up the day after Thanksgiving so we can enjoy it for several weeks.  I'm ready for next year!

Terry really missed his little houses but he settled for reminiscing and we shared memories of Christmas past.  Those when we had children living under the roof and Christmases when gone from home children, came home.

We relived the Christmas when Jeanee's family came from Florida.  Arriving at midnight... met at the airport with warm clothes... drove home to lights shining everywhere on the house and in the house like a fairyland and then the big bonus--awaking the next morning to snow falling!  It was like a perfectly scripted play!

Memories...gotta make hay while the sun shines.  There are just certain time periods in everything, like a shelf life.  You cannot postpone making memories or the time for that happening will be gone.

Like McCall.  You know that we have gone there several years, when our children had young children living at home.  Now those young children, our grandchildren, are young adults and into careers and education and jobs and marriages and that time of all of us together has sort of faded.  We have fantastic memories of the years we did McCall.

One of my friends has 5 children and they used to go the coast annually.   She said that it finally ended because of that exact thing of children building individual lives.  It isn't that the desire is gone...it's just the time for making it happen is gone.

We will continue to plan annual things but the reality is we most likely will never spend an entire week at McCall together.  I have no regrets and no sadness over that fact.  I'm thankful we planned and worked and made it happen because we all have such terrific memories.  I have such gratitude for the opportunities we had...being together and having fun!

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Spoken by President Monson at one of his birthday celebrations....

 “I echo the words of the Scottish writer and poet James Barrie, who wrote, ‘God gave us memories, that we might have June roses in the December of our lives’ (See Laurence J. Peter, comp., Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977), 335).”

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Now we make memories with family coming to see us individually.  We will plan for a gathering this summer and see who can make it.  (Those McCall memories of all the grandchildren enjoying each other and our adult children enjoying each other are so precious.  Love them!)