Not really Christmas, but sort of New Year's and Epiphany

We had rescheduled our Wray family Christmas celebration for Saturday... but due to yet another person getting sick, it had to be postponed once more.  I had already bought a bunch of berries to make a Christmas-y salad, though, and I was determined to make it for somebody.  Plus our kids really wanted to see everyone, so we invited over to our house whoever wanted to come.

Even though we didn't get to have "Christmas," we did do one of our New Year's traditions and one of our Epiphany traditions.  Our "New Year Auction" was a little smaller than it's been in previous years, but we still bought enough junk from each other to raise $100 for charity.  :)  Between the auction and all the activity with stilts (see previous post), the afternoon was a lot of fun.

The salad I insisted on making,
 even without a Christmas celebration

Then after dinner we switched to Epiphany, and had our traditional "treasure box cake."  Inside was a toothpick (on purpose) and the person who ended up finding it in his piece of cake was.... Branson!  So he was our song-leader for the evening and we enthusiastically sang "Go Tell It On The Mountain" and "Jingle Bells" at his request.

Then we sent everyone home because it was getting a little loud with all those little kids pumped up on cake.

Today we rounded out our Epiphany celebration with a big family gift, and then we chalked our door tonight.   After seeing so many "chalked" doors in Germany and Austria this past summer, we had an added appreciation for the tradition.

  May Christ bless this year and may He be further revealed in 2013!