Christmas - a Family Time

Christmas is such a wonderful time to celebrate God's greatest gift to us, His son, Jesus. When a family can be together for that celebration, it is even better!

This Christmas David, Mea & Pam arrived on Christmas Eve evening wending their way via Amtrak from San Diego to Union Station in Los Angeles, where we joyfully picked them up! Christmas Day was spent together, with G-Grandma Frey (Neil's mother) joining us.

The afternoon after Christmas Chris, Rich, & Jon arrived to make our Christmas complete. There is no greater gift than to have my "babies" and "grandbabies" together!!

What fun we had -- doing stockings and exchanging gifts, eating, playing, laughing, doing puzzles, reading books, and watching Mea play her favorite game: drop the marshmallow into Daddy's mouth. She sits on the desk in our loft, leans over the railing, and drops a mini-marshmallow with David's mouth as her target. He lies patiently on the living room floor, mouth wide open, a willing target.



One of Jon's favorite gifts was his friend, Barney, but books and puzzles also rank high in our "favorites" list.
Below, Mea wears her "crown of Christmas bows" while she and Jon enjoy looking at a photo book that Aunt Christy had made for her.





One of our absolute, all-time favorite Christmas activities is when Mea and Grammy (that's me, Patty) make homemade cinnamon rolls. Jon now joins in that fun, with Christy helping, too. A glitch with the blogger system in getting the cinnamon rolls pic to show vertically is why you're not seeing us all doing this fun task.

How grateful we are to God for the blessing of His son's birth, and for the joy of celebrating that with our family this Christmas!

Thankful We Went . . . Another Way

If you read the August 2007 entries of this blog, while Neil and I were doing our "Meander the Western States" retirement trip, you might remember that one entry talked about going . . . another way. We altered our original plans and went to Ft. Worth to see special friends, Ellen & Mike Petterson.

Mike turned 57 on his birthday in August. He had been struggling severely with neurological problems for several years, and Ellen had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. It just seemed time to go see our friends!!

The Pettersons and the Freys are 2 of 6 families in what is known as "The Panama Crew", military families who met and bonded in the early '80's when we were stationed in Panama. Through the years, these 6 families have had reunions every other year and maintained our bonds of love and friendship -- and faith in Jesus Christ. We are prayer warriors for one another, especially for the whole Petterson clan over the past weeks and months.

How grateful we are that Mike was so strong in his faith because just five days before Christmas, Mike joined Jesus in heaven.

Mike Petterson was a great family man, a dependable, caring, truly fun guy whom we all enjoyed and loved.

"The Panama Crew" will never be quite the same with Mike gone, and yet we are incredibly richer for having had his love and friendship through the years. I thank the Lord for Mike -- for his friendship and his testimony to the love and faithfulness of the Lord.

Looking back on the decision to take that little side trip to Ft. Worth last summer, Neil and I are deeply grateful for that last visit with Mike, for going . . . another way!!