Christmas at WillowBridge

 Merry Christmas Eve to all of you!!! Hope you are able to enjoy this day, regardless of what you may be doing! Since we worked Thanksgiving this year, we have Christmas off, and we're looking forward to it!

Also, before I launch into today's festivities, I want to wish my niece the happiest of birthdays. She's the best Christmas present I ever received! (And yes, I know she's not mine. But 11-year-old Bekah thought a baby was the best present ever. 42 year old Bekah still feels the same about the baby crowd.) Happy birthday, Cassie!

I wanted to tell you about the WillowBridge Christmas, which we had earlier this week! Since we won't all be together on Christmas day, we celebrated early, and we really had a wonderful night.

We started by reading the account of Jesus' birth from Luke 2 and Ryan prayed for our meal and our tenants. (And then the one prayed for us, as I told you about earlier this week.)

We had breakfast for dinner, and I solidly failed to get any photos of that food. Womp womp. Justine made a French toast casserole, I made Amish breakfast casserole (which felt extra appropriate since we live in Amish country) and we had fruit, chocolate covered strawberries, and even some biscuits and gravy. It was all delicious!

One of our tenants had requested to play the plastic wrap game - which I would guess most of you are familiar with, but for those of you who may not be, I'll catch you up to speed. You can gather whatever you want for prizes. You can do all candy or you can mix it up with little trinkets and fun stuff. We got all our prizes at the dollar store and did a mix of practical stuff (like batteries, tape, and small bottles of laundry detergent) and fun stuff (like nail polish, unicorn everything, and candy). We got a gift card to the coffee shop for the big prize in the middle, too. 

Ryan worked hard to wrap everything up in the (TWO ROLLS) of plastic wrap. If you haven't done it before, you basically start wrapping the plastic wrap around the prizes and keep twisting, turning, and rolling until you have a big ball of prizes encased in plastic wrap. There are different versions of how to unwrap it. We did the version where you have to wear oven mitts to unwrap and everyone gets 30 seconds at a time. 

They had a blast with it! It got pretty crazy and competitive for a while!

Then it was time for presents! I can't begin to convey to you what an enormous blessing we received from a group of women from a local church. They reached out to us and wanted to help with Christmas. We had no idea that helping would wind up with supplying all of Christmas for us. In writing an email to thank one of them, I said something like, "I feel like a mom who realizes her children have been given a far better Christmas than she ever could have provided herself." It was true. We did some things for the tenants, and we did them with love, but the enormity of what they experienced that night was all provided from generous friends who wanted to bless them.

I was so thankful that they seemed to realize how loved they were by these people who don't even know them. 

Here was our tree, pre-opening:

One of our tenants got us some gifts, and she had put SUCH thought into them. She gave me a coffee mug that says, "Mama needs some coffee." Indeed Mama does. (Here I am with my mug. My face was supposed to affirm the message, but I realize I just look confused. I really love the mug!)

It was fun to watch them dive into their gifts and have SUCH fun opening them.

Wait. He's not a tenant! He was trying on the headband one of them got. Ryan may not be able to model the unicorn wear. LOL!!!

Oh, it was so much fun. We had the best time. It took us a while to clean it all up, but it was a really wonderful evening, and it warmed my heart so much.

Our first WillowBridge Christmas was a success, and it was because of the great love of those who provided gifts, stockings, and more. What a blessing!

Merry Christmas from WillowBridge!