Christmases Past

It's time to put away all things Christmas and prepare for the new year.
Before I do, however, I want to share reminiscences of Christmases past, by decades.

10 years ago
We were still in the days when everyone came home Christmas Eve and stayed overnight.
Stephan, recently married, was in culinary school in Grand Rapids and Karen was teaching.
We had only three grandchildren then, ages 9, 3, 2.
Many fun photos document the family gathering. Here are a couple favorites of the young boys, and a funny clip from Letters to Santa.

Malachi posing on the countertop

Skye showing off G'ma Linda's PJ's and blanket

(FYI, Kayla's spelling has since improved to college-ready level.)

20 years ago
Stephan was a college student, glad to be home after his first semester at Moody Bible Institute.
His gifts were very creative: cards that represented something about each of us or our family and included a puzzler, hint or map to find the grunge-style flannels purchased at the Worn Again shop in Chicago.

The flannel shirts were discarded long ago, however these two cards hung framed in one of our bathrooms all these years.

Leah designed our Christmas card that year. When she saw it on the album pages I put together this Christmas, she commented on the great artwork,before realizing it was her own. smile



Our three in 1990

Mike spent three years building it in his spare time, before we could move into our new home.


The new house, taken Christmas day

We moved in shortly after Christmas thanks to help from my family members on Christmas day!

My mother, sil Kim, me, niece Tina (see previous post)

No garage door, no deck, no stairs going up to the loft, and much more to be done, but it was livable.

30 years ago--We were on the OM ship, mv Doulos. I haven't delved into those archives yet. However, we always enjoyed the ship Christmases--creative decorations and gifts, special meals, fun ship-family events, wonderful fellowship.

40 years ago--We lived in Germany. I was great with child, Stephan was born in March.

I don't remember much before that. Going back to when I was 16 and 6 would require much more research. So we'll leave it at that. An interesting exercise, nevertheless.

What will the next ten years bring, should we linger that long?