Family Celebration

Today, we celebrated Christmas with our adult children and their families that live close to us.  One of the things I noticed about Christmas when we moved back into the area where our families lived was the mad rush to different houses to celebrate Christmas.  Christmas went from a day centered on our children to a day scrambling from house to house with a brief visit to home.  Lots of stress.   When our children moved out and started their own families we searched for a way to lessen the tug of love that seemed to occur with different families at Christmas time.  We settled on celebrating Christmas the Sunday before with a family gathering of those in the area.  We missed those that live far away in other states and other countries.  This year we missed our youngest and his wife who wisely stayed home with their precious new born baby.  I was able to watch our grand kids open the presents I gathered over the last 6 months.  I keep to a very small budget and this year took on a fun challenge of making hooded towels for bath time.  (Amazingly easy if you know how to sew.)  The grand kids all tried them on and they looked like little hooded Christmas monks.  We have established a new tradition that we evolve a little more each year into a day that we enjoy each others company and still have our kids then able to enjoy their other families.  It was a wonderful day. 

Judy pointed out on Friday's post that I repeated one of the links instead of sharing the link to the Silent monks "singing" the Alleluia Chorus.  So here is the correct link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCFCeJTEzNU&feature=youtube_gdata_player