Merry Christmas and Happy Boxing Day - on Love

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas season and a Happy Boxing day from Auckland, New Zealand. This season to me is all about love - with Christmas celebrating the birth of Christ and God sharing His love with us in gifting His son Jesus and we in turn gifting each other and then Boxing day was an English tradition of giving boxes with after Christmas day treats to servants/employees to take home to families.

It's one of my favourite times of the year in spending precious time with my children without the pressures of being a working mum or the activities of schools and clubs. It's just nice to spend quality time with them and started jogging with my eldest to prepare for her next month's soccer trials; watching my middle child enjoying her creativity in creating crafts and my youngest in just being fun and able to be around mum.

It is also a neat time to catch up on some reading which I rarely have time to but this Christmas I received a book gift from my eldest called "Another mother's love" by Karen Scott (c) 2014. My children love to read from the numerous library visits I've encouraged since they were quite young and I love to read too but with my busy work week schedule it is more of a rare treat.

Initially, I wasn't interested to read it as I'd just started reading the "Hunger Games" series but because she looked so disappointed at my disinterest, I thought I needed to give it a go. However, when I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. It was such a moving non fictional story about the experiences of one loving 'blended' family's attempt to support a young troubled boy as their 'foster child'. I finished reading it's 300+ pages on and off throughout the day.

Karen Scott had me laughing in the book and crying at the end as I could relate to being a mum (to only 3 children) as opposed to her 7 but I also related as a step sister in growing up with 4 younger adopted siblings as the youngest biological child of my parents. It was compassionately written with a lot of love and very frank about their ups and downs. It made me aware of how grateful I was of my upbringing and parents and the stability I had that I try to give to my children.

I would definitely recommend this book to read for mum's and dad's wanting to foster a child but more importantly to any who have a heart for hurting children. I definitely thought that as a mum she certainly had more patience than I would have put up with but when it comes to love and kids - that's a hard one as I love having children. It's definitely a special blessing that I have been most privileged to consider this Christmas season.