Christmas Memories....

Since Jennifer asked for others to share their Christmas memories it started me thinking....What are my Christmas memories? These are from my childhood, they are a little different but yet special to me. I grew up in Miami, Florida and both sets of my grandparents lived in Jacksonville. Every other year we would travel to Jacksonville to spend Christmas with our grandparents and 3 of our cousins. My Nanny (my father's mother) had a SILVER Christmas tree set up in her family room. On the floor was a mechanism that turned a round piece of plastic that was made up of four colors, blue, red, green and yellow. There was bright light that shined through the plastic and it was pointed at the tree. Therefore as the colors rotated through, the tree changed colors. I have often thought how cool that would be to have an updated version of that Christmas tree. My granddaddy (my mother's father) did the traditional tree. As a child it always seemed so big and I can tell you it was perfect. Every light and ornament was hung just so and I always looked forward to seeing "granddaddy's tree". At home I remember my mom baking lots of cookies. We would have batches of Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal (some with no raisins just for me!), Date Bars, Thumbprint cookies and Crescent cookies. She would make up tins of these cookies and share them with the neighbors. But, one of my favorite things my parents would do with us is have a designated night where we would all pile in the car and drive around the neighborhoods and look at the Christmas lights. It was a huge, big deal to put up Christmas lights in Miami. It seemed like we spent hours driving around and seeing all the lights. Then we would go back home for some hot chocolate. Yum! After moving to Georgia my parents started the traditon of having us share what God had done in our lives during the year and we would share this on Christmas Eve. What a special time this is and what a blessing to know that God is at work in all of our lives. Merry Christmas!!!!