Over the river and through the woods…

Tomorrow we will travel to see our family in California. We will arrive at night in the darkness, and pull up to a brightly lit house with a big Christmas tree in the front window. Fluffs will bark and get so overly excited he will start running around in circles until we can catch him and smother him in hugs.

My mom will have my downstairs room all ready for us. She will have put fresh clean linens on the bed, put out the best pillows, and placed a treat on the nightstand. Everything in the house will be vacuumed and polished and shined until it is gleaming. She is very fancy.

We will unload all of our luggage and Christmas presents and then we will sit at the kitchen table and talk. We will talk about the day and the week and the six months since we were home last. We will talk about all the new things in the house and the little changes in the town. We will talk about who is coming over and what our fantastic plans are for the next week and where we will go and what we will do. She will show me some new costumes she has worked on and I will show her pictures of my new Christmas crafts. My dad will tell me about a crazy bike ride he went on last week when it was only one degree at the top of the mountain and how he almost froze to death but how it was still so awesome.

And soon we will be tired and we will put on our jammies and gather around the ottoman for family prayer. Mom made this ginormous ottoman out of an old table a long time ago, and it is so useful for kneeling around. Our numbers are getting so great that we need a bigger one. We will kneel around this big circle and laugh and giggle and for ten minutes or maybe fifteen before sitting still and reverent.

And then of us will pray and thank our Heavenly Father for our many blessings, because we have so much to be thankful for- especially at this time of year.

And it will be a perfect day.