Christmas is Coming!

It's almost here!  Christmas time, my favorite time of the year.  It all begins the day after Thanksgiving, where I'm grateful to have a lot of helpers!  

And it does all come together, although for a little bit, I wonder if it will.  Matthew got some great shots after we were done.  

But most of all, I'm grateful for the Christmas songs that we get to share.  Several years ago, my sister, Michelle, gave us a Christmas Advent book.  Through the month of December, we read a short thought, share a scripture, sing a song, and tell a story each night as we trace our Savior's ministry from pre-mortal life through His resurrection.  The last few years especially, I have found myself choking up at the smallest details in there.  The faith of a mother without food for her family, the German and American soldiers who put aside their differences for one Christmas night, the boys who use their Christmas money to buy their father a pair of shoes.  These combined with the wonderful Christmas songs bring a song to my heart and renewal to my soul.  

This will be our third Christmas with Aaron, and our last for a long time with our whole family.  Mary will leave for the Canada Vancouver mission in April and David's mission call comes tonight.  But because of a little baby, born over 2000 years ago, it will not be the end for our family.  Whether we get to experience Christmas all together again on this earth or not, our family will still go on.  And I am so grateful for that.

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Hanging out and playing with
his friends before surgery on
Tuesday.

Aaron had surgery on his ears yesterday and a dental cleaning.  His teeth are doing great.  They're all in except the one where he's got a little cleft and one molar.  His ears, not so much.  Not content with a collapsed airway, he felt the need to have collapsed ear canals as well.  That means that while there isn't an actual wall of flesh blocking access to his eardrums, the canals themselves are flat, so there's still blockage.  The doctor is talking about ear canal reconstruction surgery some years down the road.  We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  Right now, we're grateful for his BAHA hearing aid which bypasses the need for sound waves to reach his eardrums.  

On Friday, he goes in for a heart catheterization.  I'm pretty nervous about this one.  Please keep us in your prayers.  It's supposed to be same-day, but frankly, I'm not counting on it.  Along with the scariness of going up into his heart to take a look, he doesn't like to clot off real well.  Yeah, not clotting off an artery could be a not so good thing.