The [Adventure] In Which We Stop

[Adventure 347]

It was the Sunday before St. Nicholas Day, which was the next day. We had a busy morning with the Merry Marathon event at our church and then drove an hour away to go to a craft fair and to drop something off to a friend. 

Upon arriving home, our kids remembered they had yet to open the Advent calendar stocking for the day to find their little treat and the slip of paper that revealed the two choices they had for the day. Those two choices were as follows:

1: Get up at 6:30AM the next day to open their St. Nicholas Day gifts.
2: Clean the house and open their gifts that evening.

I'm fairly sure you can guess what caused an immediate flurry of activity in my house. The gifts had been under the tree for weeks and it was driving them crazy not knowing what they held.

House cleaner than it had been, we gathered around the table and the kids opened the small square packages first - giant dice...lawn dice, to be exact. A fun/funny gift to start things off. Next they opened the two bigger packages and almost immediately started putting together their gift - a 3D printer - and discussing which of their Dungeons and Dragons characters they were going to 3D print first. 

It was an incredibly busy day, but there were moments throughout the day where I just stopped and took in the blessings and the beauty...

The sky was beautiful, the air crisp, as I watched two of my teens setting up for our Merry Marathon event. I love that these two - despite all their bickering - truly love and care for each other and have such a close relationship ... and that they love to do what they can for others.

The 3D printer gift had just been opened and there was a flurry of excitement about printing their own Dungeons & Dragons characters and NPCs and monsters and all sorts of things. I sat there, caught up in that moment, the joy and excitement swirling around me. 

I need to take more time to stop and enjoy the precious moments and people in my life.