Welcome Back!!

Its Christmas time once again!!! Time for giving and getting lots of goodies, love and time with those you love!! For us its also a time (although we try to make it our goal to serve ALL YEAR LONG) to put a special emphasis on serving those around us and finding unique ways to serve those who serve, love on those who don't get enough love and be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

If you followed us last year and would like to take a look back at our journey in 2011 here's where that blog is located. http://thebigserveofchristmas2011.blogspot.com/

We post our blog and share our stories NOT to get credit for ANYTHING we've done but simply to encourage others to participate with us, to give ideas on how you and your family can participate (no family is too young- we have a 7 mo that will be going along for as much as possible this year).  So I encourage you to join in and write back how you are participating in your own Big Serve!!!

Christmas is supposed to be about Christ's birth,  Good Cheer, time with family and lots of yummy food but it often turns into time of the GREEDY GIVE-MEs as we call them in our house. Last year you may remember that we gave NO GIFTS other than donations to Samaritans Purse in our friends and families honor. I got some backlash about taking away the joy of Christmas for my sweet son. How could I not want to see his eyes on Christmas morning? How could I take away gifts? Now we did do stockings on Christmas morning but if you ask my son if he had a good Christmas last year he would tell you it was AWESOME- presents or no he was with family, ate lots of treats and SERVED LOTS of people. So I challenge you to really think through what makes Christmas the most special time of year. If you stripped away all the trappings of the season...would it be the same? In my opinion the answer would be YES if you replace the material trappings with SERVICE, LOVE, MINISTRY, LOOKING OUT FOR OTHERS along with many other simple and easy ways to love. Now do I expect anyone to do what we did, no but I challenge you to change things up and see what you can do, what you can give up and how you can teach your children the TRUE importance of Christmas (that its not about opening presents for HOURS Christmas morning or who has the biggest pile under the tree).

Now I will start off this blog letting you all know that we ARE exchanging gifts this year but I intend to still GIVE a great portion to charity instead of Retailers. I think both are very possible!

I want this blog to be somewhat of a dialogue where you can write your ideas and projects. Lets take this journey TOGETHER!!! Here we go.......