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Scenes from the Garland Christmas Celebration
By Doug | December 25, 2008
The Garland family enjoys a number of traditions each year in celebration of the birth of Christ. On Christmas Eve in the evening, we go to the service at Hampton Park Baptist Church. The service is a little different each year but has the unchanging focus of directing our hearts toward the true meaning of Christmas. It always concludes with the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Folks in the congregation are invited to join the choir for the singing. Joyce, Abby, Andrew, and Anthony sang this year. We then gather at our home. This year we shared Christmas memories which included fond remembrances of food, family gatherings, and the family version of Christmas vespers. (Ask the Garland kids about this and you will get lots of stories!) The siblings then open a gift from each other before retiring for the evening.
Christmas day began at 9:00 am as the family gathered at our home. Doug read the Christmas story from Luke 2. We then opened gifts beginning at the eldest and working toward the youngest. It was great fun to see what everyone opened! Anthony got the prize for the most unusually wrapped gift. He bought his father a large umbrella and put it inside a 6′ long paper tube. He then took a smaller paper tube and attached it to the other with duct tape at 90 degree angle at the top. It looked like a giant “T” and generated a number of guesses as to what might be in the contrapion. Some of the better ones were a plumbing tool, a soil corer, or a divining rod. Turned out just to be a large well-disguised umbrella! Grandma Q passed out a number of gifts cards from various stores and we then swapped them with each other to try to end up with ones to our favorite stores. Abby made cinamon rolls from scratch for breakfast and all of us greatly enjoyed them.
We went to the BJU Dining Common for lunch about noon and enjoyed a fine meal with Mel’s family.
We then enjoyed a quiet afternoon and evening of reading, playing games, raking leaves, and of course eating.
Thanks be unto God for the great gift of a family!
Topics: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:55 pm
The “family portraits” look painful.