Merry Christmas!

There's nothing like a ride in Santa's Sleigh to bring out the wonder and excitement of the season! As we grow together as a family, this year has helped us continue to learn that the things that are important are often times not things. We praise God for many blessings in 2009, many of which can be tracked right here in this blog, so sit back with a warm cup of hot chocolate and spend as much time as you'd like with the Scholtens.

As for our Christmas plans...We had a star in the church Christmas Pageant. You couldn't see him or hear him, but rest assure he was a star both figuratively and literally. Pictures were hard to come by but you can see that Mac was on stage and Bennett was on fire and trying to take off his sweater all night. It was the best and worst rendition of "Away in a Manger" and "Go Tell it on the Mountain" we have ever experienced! I guess one has to be a parent to fully appreciate this feeling.

We're heading to Grammy and Gramps Scholtens in Georgia for Christmas Day. We'll tune back in after the big day to let you know if Santa found us and if Uncle Drew received coal in his stocking once again in 2009!

And a favorite part of our holiday this year is looking at the Christmas lights and talking about our manger scene. Thanks to the boys, our manger scene has "3 Wise Guys" visiting Jesus. They came to Bethlehem "riding the reendeer". Mary and "Doufus" (how we pronounce Joseph here) are in the stable and, thanks to our cousin Greta, we refer to the Shepherds as "Hookers" because of their shepherding hooks. Gotta love it!

We continue to be humbly blessed and thoughtfully challenged to depend wholly on this small child born on Christmas! Here's to 2010! Pray hard, Play Hard, and stop by if you're in the area!