Food 4 Thought Friday

GET YOUR APPETITE ON and PLAY ALONG! Just copy and paste the questions to your blog and PLEASE leave a comment that you played along so others can go and check out your answers. These are so much fun to go back and read later!

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Welcome to Beacon of Hope's:

Food 4 Thought Friday!

A little feast without the calories!!

Feel free to play along for some yummy fun! I will post a new one each Thursday night. JOIN IN!!!

Food 4 Thought Friday ~ This week's questions:

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HOLIDAY MEMORIES   

Breakfast ~ What is the best gift you ever received at Christmas?
Lunch ~ Do you have a special Christmas memory from when you were a child?
Dinner ~ What is the best gift you have ever given at Christmas?
Midnight Snack ~ Which Christmas has special meaning to you and why?
Recipe of the Week ~ (instead of your recipe for life what is it just for the week?) 

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MY ANSWERS

HOLIDAY MEMORIES   
Breakfast ~ What is the best gift you ever received at Christmas?  The year Dave and I had our first Christmas together as a married couple and were dirt poor, he gave me a chest he had specially made for me.  When I opened the lid of the chest, there was a poem he had written for me.  The poem is still in the chest.

I also remember getting a Velvet doll when I was a little girl that had a purple dress.  I loved that doll so much.  I also loved my Crissy doll.

Also when we lived in St. Louis and were going to medical school, we couldn't afford to come home for Christmas and so Dave's parent's bought us tickets to come home.  That was such a great gift!

 Lunch ~ Do you have a special Christmas memory from when you were a child? When I was about six or seven years old, I remember laying in my bed on Christmas eve and being so excited for Santa to come.  I got up and looked out my window and I saw a red light way up in the sky and I KNEW that I just saw Rudolph's red nose pulling Santa's sleigh.  I hurried and jumped in bed and tried so hard to go to sleep so he would be sure to visit our house.
Dinner ~ What is the best gift you have ever given at Christmas? This one is tough.  I am sure there are many, but I can't think of just one right now and so I will say that any gift I made by hand.  I started the tradition of doing a calendar each year for mine and Dave's parents and I have not missed one year in 33 years.  They are a LOT of work and very time consuming, but they are usually the favorite gift they receive because they are personal and meaningful.  The first few years, I didn't put photos on them, but just cut out pictures on cards or drew something.  I added a "Be nice to _________day" for each member of the family and those were much looked forward to days.  I am not sure when I stopped adding those, but I no longer do.  I started to add photos as well as captions.  The captions were the best part.  I always tried to get candid shots for them.  Now I do them all digitally.  You would think that I could do them much faster that way, but I am convinced it takes even longer!  Also, Dave made my parents a coffee table out of walnut one year and that was a great gift from us.  It was beautiful.  
* I thought of another one...   Each Christmas we have always tried to help out a needy family.  When we were in Dave's residency and still dirt poor, we chose a family that we thought could use some help.  That year I had found an outfit for Bryce that I loved so much and I was planning on giving it to him for Christmas.  He was two at the time.  It was the cutest little outfit.  I was so excited to give it to him because I knew he would look so cute in it!  I just loved it!  Well, this family also had a son the same age and I felt very strongly that I should give it to them for their son.  It was not easy for me to part with it, but I felt good about it and knew they needed it more than we did.  Heavenly Father sometimes sends blessings so clear that they almost light up like a flashing neon sign.  That happened that year.  On Christmas morning, Bryce opened his present from his Grandma and it was that exact outfit!  I could not believe it.  I was almost in shock.  I could feel Heavenly Father smiling down on me and sending me that blessing because I was willing to sacrifice something I wanted so much to help someone that needed it more.  The crazy part of the story is that the mother of the family that we helped anonymously that year confided in me later that someone left presents on their door for Christmas and she was offended because she was not a charity case and did not want people to think they needed help.  Maybe that is why Heavenly Father sent that blessing to me.  Whatever the reason, it was one of those Christmas miracles to me.

 This is a picture of Bryce in the outfit.  This is one of my favorite pictures of Bryce.  

Midnight Snack ~ Which Christmas has special meaning to you and why?  I would have to say the Christmas that Tyson passed away.  He passed on December 2nd and miraculously we had our tree up with lights but no ornaments.  We were lucky we even had a tree.  He had been so sick and so we really didn't have much time for Christmas preparations.  He LOVED the lights on the Christmas tree more than anything else about Christmas.  So because of that, Dave and the boys went and got a tree and strung the lights on it just so he could see them.  He spent his days and nights in my bedroom so I could be close to him in case he had trouble.  He was too weak to go downstairs and look at the lights but he was able to see them from my bedroom because the tree was so tall.  That meant so much to him.  He loved to just look at them.   I will be forever grateful that he was able to enjoy that tree even if it was only for a few days before he passed on.  We never did put ornaments on the tree that year.  It was such a difficult time and no one felt much like putting them on.  We decided that it was perfect the way it was with only lights because that is what Tyson liked the most about it anyway.  We had many visitors that Christmas.  Many people stopped by to express their condolences or bring us a sympathy card or gift.  When they came in and saw the tree, no one really asked why it didn't have any ornaments on it. That Christmas is mostly a blur to me now.  It was one of the hardest yet one of the most meaningful and beautiful Christmases I've ever experienced because we felt the love of so many friends, as well as the love of the Savior.  It was tangible that year.  I felt Tyson's spirit near.
Recipe of the Week ~ (instead of your recipe for life what is it just for the week?)  This is for me:  With the hustle and bustle of the season, take time to STOP and ENJOY all that is offered only at this special time of year.  The concerts, the parties, the Christmas programs, the TV specials.  There are so many things to see and participate in that are only available during Christmas.  Don't get so busy with the Christmas preparations that you miss out on all the wonderful gifts so freely given right now.  Because once Christmas is gone, so are they.