I went to my kid's/wife's school assembly this morning at Mary McPherson. Heather is a kindergarten teacher there, and all 3 of my children attend there as well. It is cool because the principal and like 4 other teachers there go to our church. Heather loves teaching there.

The school does an assembly once a month, where they give out awards to kids that display the virtue of the month.

Heather presented awards to her class. I was able to snap some pictures of that. She did a great job.

Christopher won an award for being courteous. He was so cute.

Trevar won an award last year for a virtue as well. I'm sure at some point Cassi will win an award as well. She will probably get the award for having the most energy.

I have a great family.

As Christians we know what Christmas is really about. I think that is very clear and evident. At least I hope it is for believers.

I've wrestled with the thought of whether I should promote Santa, or even allow the "Connelly" family to have any part in Santa. I have also been told if you mix the letters in Santa up, you get Satan. Hee Hee.

I have met Christians that believe either way about Santa. (Not that they actually believe in Santa.) Some believe that Santa is just a fun thing to do at Christmas, and others are adamantly against even talking about him, because they think it takes the importance out of what God did for us by sending his son to earth.

I think if we are not careful we can allow anything (outside of Jesus Christ) to take the place of the importance of Christmas. We can allow family, programs, parties, presents, trees, food, and even church sometimes to overshadow the real reason for Christmas.

So my point is that we have to remember to place Jesus above everything on Christmas. If we keep Him as our focus, I think all of the other stuff can be good and even help promote the real reason for Christmas.

So back to Santa. Heather and I allow "talk" of Santa in our house. When we first adopted our children, and they were still young enough to believe in Santa, we had fun with it. But we never allowed that to take the place of Jesus. We always taught and will continue to teach our kids why we celebrate Christmas.

Our kids have always wanted to sit on Santa's lap at the mall, so we finally did it this year. They had a great time!!!

Oh and by the way, if you are reading this, and I spoiled the story of Santa for you, I'm sorry. But he is not real.

If you get a chance comment on the blog and let me know what you think.

We did it. Our kids have been asking for a couple weeks now, but we finally made time to put the Christmas tree up.

This year I decided to let the kids attempt to put it up by themselves. Probably not my smartest move. Our "fake" tree has color coded limbs. They had 3/4 of the tree done when I realized that they mixed up the colors, and therefore had the limbs mixed up. But it is all good. We just started over and got it done right. We had a good time.

I can remember as a kid how much fun Christmas time was. I remember putting up the tree, and begging my parents to let us put lights outside, which they did. Those are really good memories.

This year I decided to put lights up on our house. Again, what was I thinking. We got them put up and now we are decorated up. I hope my kids can have great memories of the Christmas season, just like I did when I was kid.