Christmas 2015

  What a wonderful Christmas it was this year celebrating the birth of our Savior Jesus! The past few Christmases I have intentionally avoided taking pictures to be more in the moment during the holiday, but this year I wanted pictures to remember it in future years.

  For dessert my mom made chocolate cupcakes, I made chocolate chip mint cookies, and my sister made no bake cookies only using sunbutter to replace peanut butter because of her allergy.

  It is tradition for my sister and I to get a new ornament every year, always signifying something important about the year. Above is my 2015 ornament. On the back my mom wrote "51 pages" because that is how many pages of my novel I wrote this semester for my independent study. I was so excited to not only meet my goal of 50 pages, but exceed it! My mom asked me how I was going to reward myself, and I didn't know how, especially in the middle of finals. But I think this ornament is perfect. 

  When I think back on this Christmas, it is in flashes. It is the chocolate chips I intentionally loaded into the cookie dough falling out as I try to scoop them onto the cookie sheet. It is Nana telling me about all of the writers on both sides of my family. It is listening to my dad read the story of Jesus' birth in Luke. It is being crowded in our small kitchen with my mom. It is hearing my sister squeal after opening the present I gave her. It is the uncertainty I feel about my future, but the hope I have all because a baby boy who was fully God and fully man came to earth to humble Himself and die.