Memories of Christmas Past

Christmas has always been my favorite time of year. I love the music, the lights and decorations, the snow, the food, the giving, even the craziness of the stores, I just love it all! So I thought I'd share some of my memories with you.

*Reading Christmas stories every night, or at least the nights we got around to it, and I especially loved reading the new stories we got.

*Packing in our car and driving around to see the Christmas lights. Especially Christmas street.

*Choir performances. In junior high and especially high school, we got out of school a lot to go perform at various places; the Church Office Building, Joseph Smith Memorial Building, nursing homes, the Assembly Hall, and other places I can't remember. Sometimes they were very early morning performances, but it was so fun. I don't know why I never bought any of our CD recordings, I wish I had them.

*Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa's house. White elephant gifts, dinner in the pit, family performances (I've ALWAYS loved to read, and one year I sat and read How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I can imagine how boring that must have been for everybody else), and after Grandma died going to her grave and singing Christmas songs with lit candles.

*Getting up the day after Thanksgiving, bringing out the Christmas music and spending the WHOLE day putting up Christmas decorations. Mom has a LOT of decorations...

*All of us kids sleeping in the same room Christmas Eve night.

*Waking up to homemade Cinnamon Rolls and Orange Juice. My favorite!

*Helping my mom put together neighborhood gifts: reindeer out of plastic cups, trains out of candy, etc.

*Opening presents on Christmas Eve and knowing exactly what it was...pajamas. My dad always put on the label "To: Cameo (or whosever it was) From: Eve"

*Going to All-A-Dollar and getting my siblings presents and thinking I was getting such great gifts! Thankfully we draw names now...

*When Jeremy took me to Kurt Bestor's Christmas concert. It was such an awesome concert and I knew it cost him lots of money and he didn't have any money (pizza delivery guy in Provo...) That was also the night I finally let him kiss me again.

*My new favorite tradition/memory; going to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas concerts. I believe my first one was when I was in high school with Jae and Angela Lansbury was their special guest. We were on the second row, it was sweet. Jae also tried to give some homeless guy McDonald's fries and he wouldn't take them. I've gone to the concert ever since and hope to continue that tradition even though the tickets are getting extremely difficult to get.

Merry Christmas to EVERYONE!!! Not Happy Holidays, not Season's Greetings, but MERRY CHRISTMAS! Remember the reason for the season!