Christmas

This is our first Christmas, we had only been married a few months and barely living in our home.  I really think that my Grandma and cousins were with us, but I don't seem to find a photo.  What I remember is this.  I was a Christian and God was prompting me that we were to read something about Christmas before we opened our gifts.  That had never happened in my home as a child.  I had this tract from Lutheran Bible Institute and so be fore we started opening gifts, I said that I wanted to read this to them.  I remember feeling nervous about doing that, but still knew that inside of me I was to do it.  I remember my Grandma afterwards telling me she really appreciated my doing that.  I know it was what God wanted me to do and we have continued since that time  reading the Christmas story to our family.  It depends on who is with us and their ages, just how we do it.  Sometimes from a Children's book.  I remember one year Jack and I and the children were alone and we acted out the story.  I think Julie was about three at that time.  During the years that my parents were able to be with us.  They would spend one Christmas with Ann and one with us.  In earlier years Don and Ann would come to Hampden some years.  I see photos that show Grand and Lucille with us, too.  We were together with my family on Christmas eve and with Grandpa and Grandma Neidlinger for Christmas Day.  I think you all remember Grandma O'Briens last Christmas, I wanted to go see her on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, but they were predicting a storm and she told me she didn't want me to come.  It did hit and so hard that you couldn't see anything in the yard even.  She was invited downstairs to be with her neighbors and the next day her high school friend Clara Fawcett invited her to her home in Devils Lake.  I was very thankful to be at home, there were people who were stranded in their cars that night.