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The Holiday Season Part I: The 25 Days of Christmas and 25 Reasons Why I Love my In-laws

This is a statement of fact: I have the best in-laws ever! For Christmas they surprised us with the 25 days of Christmas. Let me explain.  For the first 11 days, my in-laws took turns writing happy encouraging emails, including several that had pictures of our 2 year old niece. That's like instant happiness! On the 12th of December, we received a big box. Inside we found tons of gifts all wrapped up and each one had note with a day on it! So I lined up all the gifts in numerical order along the windowsill.
December was a difficult month. We were so busy, I was really sick for 2 weeks, and we had just moved and so everything was a mess, and then we were so far away from family. But having a little gift to open each morning was so exciting and beautiful! There was something to look forward to on a daily basis (and a reason to get up in the morning), and every day we had a reminder that we were loved!
Some of the gifts included:
Plastic snowflake confetti that we had lots of fun with!
Peanut butter cookie mix for Janna the baker!
Minty stuff. I think they're saying we have bad breath.
Medicine (from my mother-in-law who is a nurse of course)!
Twizzlers (a Ross family favorite)!
A puzzle (for Daniel who does a puzzle every Christmas)!
New Hats!
I wanna be a gangster!
Aww! Isn't he cute!
A new DVD!
The Night Before Christmas book with a built in recording of them reading it out loud, including a page where my niece "reads!"

Many of you asked me how Christmas was, if I was sad and homesick. I was to some extent, but really, how could I be sad when I have such amazing in-laws? I am so blessed. God provided exactly what I needed! Love you Don, Brenda, Eric, Shae, and Avory!

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