Yesterday, December 23rd was Joshua's 8th birthday. After church we were able to do a little unpacking in the house before my family arrived for his birthday party and our family Christmas celebration. My brother Steve, sister-in-law Sandi and kids Elena, Emma and Evan, arrived with a big surprise -- a huge Christmas tree. It would not have fit in our old house, but it looks great with our new vaulted ceilings. What a fun surprise. All of our ornaments were packed away in bins that had been piled in our living room waiting to be stored somewhere. We all had fun decorating the tree.
Joshua, of course received many gifts for his birthday and then we were off to geocache -- see link to the left to learn more. We were only able to find two sights, but one was in a part of San Juan that we had never visited before. With our recent rains the hills were green and the air was clean and fresh. We are so sorry for those of you snowed in right now. We love our 65 degree Christmases. We went back to our house and enjoyed a ham dinner with all the fixings, thanks to my generous family. There were more gifts, for everyone this time and then games and lots of sweets until about 10:00 p.m.
Before I tell you where we went after everyone left for their homes, I have to go back to the morning when we were at church. This was probably the sweetest gift of the day. We told a few friends about our situation -- escrow not closing and us not feeling comfortable breaking the rules and sleeping in the house. Kellie, who helped us move on Saturday overheard and immediately invited us to stay with them. Her husband agreed and I gratefully accepted. About 30 minutes later I had a message on my cell phone from another good friend. She decided to use part of a recent inheritance to put us up in a suite at the Double Tree Hotel in Dana Point for three nights. She thought (rightly) that I might enjoy just having family time and not living with anyone else for a few days. Wow! What a blessing. Our rooms have an ocean view with a king size bed (Ahhhh!) and a pull-out couch for Joshua.
The amazing thing is that for the two days that I was looking for a place to stay and everything kept falling through, I had this thought that God must have something better for us. That is not my normal response to disappointing circumstances, but God is so good and he has blessed us so much that I figured He must having something special in store. Wow! I never would have guessed this.
Today we are moving the last of our belongings out for Kristin and Rani's house and Lord willing, escrow will close on Wednesday so we can officially move into our new home.
May you see the many ways God is blessing you this Christmas,
Sheryl
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