Christmas Blessings

Today is Christmas Day. The most wonderful time of the year! So this Christmas I planned to spend a lot of nights alone. Daniel was scheduled to work Christmas Eve night, Christmas night and the night after Christmas day. Well blessings sometimes come in obvious packages :) Christmas Eve night Daniel went to work at 6 like usual. I went to visit him at midnight for his break, and after his half hour break, he was in the right place at the right time and the hospital let him go home then :) So he got to come home with me at 1230am, which was 2 hours early. :) Today is Christmas. We had a wonderful Christmas together (I'll talk about it later), but all day we'd been just hoping in the back of our minds that Daniel would get put on call so that he could stay home for the rest of Christmas, but we hope for that pretty much every time that Daniel goes to work. Well, a second blessing just stared us in the eye: Daniel was just put on call. We are both so excited! Now we can have the rest of Christmas Day together! And because he's on call he still gets paid a little bit of his normal $10 an hour for 8 hours for tonight. Because of these little blessings we might be able to spend the whole 24 hours of Christmas Day together. We're really happy. This is a great day.
So let me tell you a little bit about our wonderful Christmas Day it self. When Daniel got home early at around 1230 a.m. I had a romantic table spread of candles and Martinelli's so we toasted to Christmas and Daniel being home.
Then I got up at 8 (because that's when we decided we were going to get up to open our stockings) to make orange rolls. I was going to have them as part of the surprise when Daniel got home, but because he got home early they still had to rise for a couple more hours so I saved them for breakfast in the morning.
So, we had orange rolls for breakfast, then at around 9 we opened our stockings. We got some fun stuff that we played with for a while :) I filled Daniel's stocking and he filled mine. Also, this year I made our stockings. They each took me about 8 hours to do, so 16 hours total. I was going to line them, but I didn't get time for it, which ended up being a good thing because they would not have been big enough if we couldn't have stretched them.
We got lots of chocolate, Daniel got me SKIP- BO which I have wanted ever since we played it with Frank and Stacee. I got Daniel this bug like robot that is really hard to describe, but also pretty fun. We've already worn out the batteries, although that's because it was on for 4 hours with out us knowing about it. oops. We got each other little bb guns from the dollar store, no pain is involved when we shoot each other with them because the bbs are made of plastic, but they are a lot of fun. We had an awesome battle in which I surrendered... sort of. Daniel shot me in the eye :p We watched Scooby- doo which Daniel got me, and he played a computer game which I got him- or he got and gave to me to give to him.
At noon we opened our Christmas presents. We have decided that every year we're going to get each other legos so that we can have a lego collection for our kids to play with. I think Daniel just wants it because he loves legos. Either way, we got some legos :) We got clothes, a wicker laundry basket, Daniel got a bathrobe, and I got him an enlargement of one of his favorite paintings. It's by Carl Bloch. It's not very common, and there for expensive (at least for a college student) and hard to find. Luckily (another obvious blessing of ours I guess) BYU has been selling Carl Bloch paints because the MOA (Museum of Art) is featuring Carl Bloch paintings. The painting is called "Casting out Satan". It is an unusual size so we're going to get a custom frame and mat for it. Daniel has wanted this painting for a while, and I'm so excited that we have it. Daniel made the most amazing background for our Nativity set. I love it so much, and it is perfect! I am so amazed at how skilled Daniel is! I will treasure this forever!
After playing with our new toys and stuff for a while we got ready for the day (by now it was probably 1), ate lunch, and went over to visit Shelly (Daniel's sister in Provo) and her family. We love hanging out with the Butlers, and actually I don't know why we don't go over more often, but I'm glad we were able to today. We came home around 430 so that Daniel could take a nap before work, but he got put on call when we got home, so that filled him with so much excitement and energy that he couldn't sleep, so he's playing his game now.

I don't know how the rest of the night will go, if Daniel will have to go to work, or not, but all in all, it has been a wonderful wonderful Christmas, and I am so grateful for our blessings!

Christmas truly is a wonderful time of the year, and right now, after I've talked about the fluff and presents of Christmas I want to take a minute to remember the reason for the season. This is the time of year when we celebrate the birth of our savior Jesus Christ the Lord. Christ came to this earth the same as all of us. As a baby child. Innocent and small. He grew up to help the needy, heal the sick, and teach everyone around him. He is the perfect example of how we should lead our lives. Through the scriptures he taught us so many of the same things that he taught when he lived on the earth. We have his parables and his actions. We know his gospel and we know his purpose. I think it is important to look at his live, and see how we can improve ourselves to be more like Christ. Thanks to Christ's sacrifice for us we can do that. We have the ability to repent and become better every day. I am so grateful for that opportunity and for times like Christmas that remind us to be more like Christ.

Merry Christmas.