Now if you’re sitting reading my blog on Christmas Day, read fast and go back to the real world!

It’s all different this year in the Blackmore household. This is the first time ever that we have not all been together for Christmas and so it brings a different flavor to the holiday. We’re a tight bunch, as you might have gathered, but life is all about changes.

I won’t be making my brief Christmas dinner table speech that the best gift of all is having my family all around the table, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the best thing I have this Christmas is a wonderful wife, children and grandchildren who are the #1 joy of my life.

It’s all a little new this year, but new traditions are good too.

We’re heading over to Charlotte’s later for what will be an amazing celebration as her father-in-law, Freddy, who should have died in his sky-diving fall in July, was released from hospital on Friday and will be there with us. This is the Christmas none of the doctors expected him to see! I guess God had other plans!

So, wherever you are, Merry Christmas.

And if things are not the way they once were, appreciate what you have now – and enjoy!