With the hustle and bustle of making the holidays bright. We allow personal pressures to get to us easier than they would on normal home visits.

Some of the best moments in life are the ones where we sat as a family and opened Christmas gifts. Each child would take a turn and dad and I would take pictures or video the children with their gifts.

Then our time would fill with rushing around from relative to relatives homes to hand out gifts to them. Leaving us all exhausted when the day came to an end.

Christmas eve was always special in our home. That's when as a child I would get together with my family and celebrate. All of my brothers and sisters would bring their children and mom and dad would light up the Christmas tree and put out a ham and some other good food. We would eat, drink and be merry by a warm fireplace.

We often went caroling around our neighborhood streets to some of the elderly homes. Handing out a small token of love to those we sung out in harmony to.

This year I have invited all of my children to spend the night with us on Christmas Eve. So that on Christmas morning their children can all wake up and be together. I thought that it would be a good idea since both my oldest children are just starting out and they do not have decorations to adorn their homes. I also made a point of it to pass down some of my decorations to each of my children and their new families.

So far the only person that has said anything negative about spending the night on Christmas Eve is my sons girlfriend. So I gently took back my invitation to her and her children. I had not meant to hurt anyones feelings in suggesting that everyone stay the night here. I just wanted to offer the opportunity for all the kids to be together on one more Christmas morning.

Coming home for the holidays is something that everyone has feelings about. For some of us they are good memories and for others they are not so wonderful.

I have to remind myself of this from time to time.
When we first adopted our children they didn't really have a concept of what Christmas was about.
They came with stories of how they had a wonderful Christmas and then someone stole all the presents.
Only to learn that mom and dad had taken the presents back for drug money.

It took us a few years to live down the old memories and to move on to the new memories. My daughters husband does not believe in buying presents. So we have to work around his feelings also.

We have decided that with the children getting older we are going to begin sending gift cards through the mail in the following years to come.

We of course will be right here where they left us celebrating the birth of Christ and lighting up the Christmas tree and filling it with gifts for our much smaller family now. An open invitation will be given to our children to come home for the holidays when ever they want.

We just have to realize that life is changing and we must change with it. For their sakes and the sakes of their new families. However I hope that my kids always feel the warm welcome when they make the choice to come home again for the holidays.