Family

With this Christmas season I have been thinking about family even more than past Christmases. I think it is because this is the first Christmas in many years that the entire family has all been together. Also, this Christmas marks the end of many things for our family and the beginning of many new and great things to come.

This Christmas Eve we all celebrated at Brad and Jet's house. One highlight was when we reenacted the Nativity story and it was the 20th anniversary of the first time we filmed it as a family since it began on my first Christmas when I played the part of baby Jesus.



It has been so great to see our family grow through in-laws and nephews and to see the new element and personality that each of them bring to the family. We will only continue to grow and develop and it will be so fun to experience.



I think back on all the memories I have had with my family through the years and it really has been quite a journey.

The last time, before this Christmas, that we were all together.

I just finished reading "Finding Noel" by Richard Paul Evans(yes, yet another book by him) and I came across a quote about family that I thought rang true. It is something I have really come to realize in the last few years as I have discovered that, just as any other family, we are not perfect and do not always say or do the right things, but the beauty is not in the perfection, it is in the creation.

“I’ve come to know that our families are a canvas on which we paint our greatest hopes—imperfect and sloppy, for we are all amateurs at life, but if we do not focus too much on our mistakes, a miraculous picture emerges. And we learn that it’s not the beauty of the image that warrants our gratitude—it’s the chance to paint.”

-Richard Paul Evans