Christmas eve eve lightbulb moment

I had one of those moments today.. you know the ones, where everything lines up perfectly to give you a glimpse of something extra special in an otherwise ordinary situation... I took the kids to the shops today to see Santa. Was a nuts choice in every way, the shops were madness, the kids were a bit freaked out by the crowds, Amahli cried from the moment we got out of the car till the moment we got back IN the car, Santa line was crazy.... But worst of all was the ridiculous amount of "bad form people" madly trying to finish off Christmas....

The mother who yells at her kid to smile for the Santa photo or " ALL THE TOYS ARE GOING BACK!"
The mother who is literally dragging her kids by the shirt as shes in a rush and cant stop to let him look at the nativity scene.
The kids who are crying as they are tired of shopping but mum is hell bent on getting them " just one last thing".
The person in front of me who spent $670 on "last minute things" for her TWO ( yup just TWO) kids..

Christmas seems to have gotten out of control.

I came home, tired and a bit disillusioned over what Christmas has become to our world. I want so much for my kids to get the real meaning of Christmas and to be able to celebrate without being overwhelmed with the push to get get get. I want them to know that the whole point of Christmas is the quiet, unassuming but HUGE event that was Jesus birth and what that means to them. Jared and Amahli got out of the car, hand in hand, and tottered off to play. Jumeirah I found about 15 minutes later with this little scene.

Its a very precious tiny nativity set I was given about 15 years ago from a very special preschool child. She had set it up and was replaying a simple version of the first Christmas.

(Although the angel did give baby Jesus a lap around the block on the back of her wings... ) She was totally engrossed, totally in the moment of creating a beautiful, simple scene. And then, all the characters, including donkey, camel and sheep, lay flat on their faces, "bowing down" to this tiny baby.

And she turns to me and says " Cos thats what it should be."

And Im grounded, floored, and happy, because I know she gets it :)

And so for the rest of the day, we did simple things together. Amahli helped ( I say helped in the loosest possible way but she had fun) make the peppermint bark, Jumeirah supervised the making of peanut toffee, and I tried to take a family photo ( hopeless little rats wouldnt play nice).

Lucky you, I will be back to finish off before Christmas :)