Advent Blog Hop

Hi friends! Welcome to the 11th day of the Advent Blog Hop. So glad you stopped in. If you are not familiar with this, you can check out all 10 prior days of the Hop, over here at Serendipitous Stitching. Jo will be updating the entries daily. You can see how everyone celebrates, and enjoy some seasonal stitching and nice stories too.

This year I am sharing three new stitched ornaments for our tree. I made them all earlier this year.

My regular followers will recognize these. For any new friends here, these are Mabel and Henry, our toy poodles.

Jo would like us to also share our best Christmas present ever. I would have to say I received that back in 1987. Brian and I had been dating for 13 months. I was 18, he was 19 years old. I was invited to spend Christmas eve with his family. Well you can imagine I was a bit nervous.

I should give you a bit of background history here briefly. Brian's father created his own business when Brian was young. He ended up doing very well for himself financially. I came from a poor family. My father and mother divorced when I was 8. We rarely saw my father. He never paid child support. My mother constantly struggled to get food for our table. I have three younger brothers. So we were all used to having not much and accepted this.

So on with the story! It came time for me to open my one gift. It was a very large box. I opened it to find a new, white, down-filled  winter coat and royal blue knitted hat, mittens and scarf. My MIL had noticed my thin winter coat that truly did NOT keep me warm here in Wisconsin. Now I had NEVER in my life received such gifts at Christmas. To say I was overwhelmed with emotion, well that is putting it mildly. So what did I do? I could not even look up, because I was crying. Not just one teardrop mind you, I was an emotional mess. Brian was stunned. His only sibling, my future BIL Andy, was staring. My future MIL was trying to figure out what was wrong. My future FIL, he saved me. He knew instantly. He grew up poor also. He knew what it was like to receive a fantastic gift and be ever so grateful for it. He jumped up and "got busy distracting everyone" after he handed me a tissue box. They all gave me a moment or two to collect myself and my voice. And then I thanked them properly, and the rest is history.

My Christmas wish for you is that you are filled with the real joy of what this time of year is all about. My hope is that you recognize your need of a Savior. Let’s celebrate that God sent His Son to save us from our sins! Advent is the preparation for the arrival of the Messiah in the birth of the Christ Child.

Stitching and praying,
Vickie