Deck the Halls

We celebrated Christmas 5 times this year....yes, that's right. We had 5 Christmases. Our life is pretty similar to the movie Four Christmases, if you've ever seen that. We celebrate Christmas with my moms side of the family, my dads side of the family, Jacob's immediate family, Jacob's extended family, and then we have our own Christmas with each other! It was a crazy few days, but we actually had a good schedule of events this year and it was so nice to be able to spend so much quality time with our families. 

A cool thing that we did this year on the Willis side of the family is give money to a cause rather than give a bunch of gifts to each other. We went through an organization called Living Water International and gave money to fund a well for a community in Peru. It costs $5,000 to build a well there. We got the extended family in on it and ended up raising a total of $3,200! We are still raising money to make it to $5,000, so hopefully that will get finished up in the next month. We were really excited to take part in something bigger than gift giving this year...it was really special. Check out this video to see more about the initiatives of Living Water International.

On an even bigger note, Jake and I are both so grateful for the reason that we even celebrate Christmas. The fact that God sent his son into the world as an innocent baby is just incredible. He is God. He could have come into the world in a million different ways, but that is how he chose to enter our presence as a human. It is so humbling! And not only that, but he sent him here to die on the cross for our sins so that we could be in relationship with the God of the universe. How cool! The song, Winter Snow, is such a beautiful song and I think it sums it up perfectly. Check out the song here.

Also, our pastor, Andy Stanley, made this great video about the historical relevance of Christmas and I think it is so educational and interesting! Just wanted to share that as well. Check out the video here.

We hope that you all had an amazing Christmas with your families celebrating the amazing gift of Jesus!

Our Tree!