So little hope, so little happiness, so much anger, so much sadness.

The little old lady pushing the grocery cart, filled with her only belongings, struggling along the way, crushed my Christmas Spirit.

Oh the sorrow I felt in my heart for her. How could I pass her by?

I thought at one time this woman was a young child with great anticipation at this time of year. At one time, perhaps, she was a young wife, a young Mother, an executive, who would ever know!

She was dirty, smelly, hungry. Was this the humankind I wanted to talk with, to be next to, to love?

I reached out to her, gave her a smile, gave her a hug, took her to my home for a meal, for a bath, for some warmth and comfort.

When she was no longer hungry, I gave her a warm bed, with sweet smelling sheets and a warm comforter in which to wrap herself, have a pleasant dream or two.

Not only was this the real meaning of Christmas, my gift to her brought her great joy, but more than that; I received the best Christmas gift I had received in a long time. Joy at giving love to another child of God.

When I softly knocked on her door the next morning, there was no sound. So I slowly opened the door and to my wonderment, there was a made bed, upon which lay one sweet red rose. No sign of my visitor, only the soft scent of the rose.

Could it be I had entertained an angel? Or our Lord?

What will you offer a stranger this Christmas Season?

Go, love, and spread the Good News, "Unto Us A Savior is Born!"

Well here we are again. I would normally say it has been a fast year, but then they all are so I will refrain from that this year. It seems that the busy part of the year is getting to be longer each year also, seems we have been busy since last Christmas without any letup.

We have had several major happenings in our lives this year, from little ones reaching major milestones. You will read about them below, but for now let me say that they all are big deals in our house, even the ones that seem to be the smallest to most people. In our family, we try to celebrate even the small steps that the Lord allows us to make in spite of ourselves.

Don't remember if we mentioned this last year, but Chris left school last winter and has been at New Horizons since last January. He seems to really enjoy "working" now. He gets on a big white bus now instead of the big yellow school bus. He works 5 days a week, getting paid every other week. He is really proud of his paycheck, and wants to be "just like Dad and Charles" as he goes to work each day.

Charles has left the nest. He moved out last February, lived with Grma and Grpa a couple months, then moved out to Oxnard. He had a job out there for a bit, then found another better one in Camarillo. For those of you who are out of the area he only has to drive about 15 miles each way to work. In the spring he announced to us that he was engaged to a girl named Patti. Well they are now husband and wife. They got married on October 6th, 2005. Many of you probably got an announcement. The wedding was a very private ceremony outside of Las Vegas between Charles and Patti so don.t feel bad that you didn't know about it before it happened.

When you hear about "empty nest syndrome", don't for one minute doubt that it can happen. Even with 11 more at home, we miss Charles. We wish him the best and will always pray for him and now Patti, but at the same time we have a Charles shaped hole in our home. The younger ones mention him always and he drops by occasionally when he is driving by to a consulting job or something, so he is still in our lives, but it is now different.

We celebrated our 25th anniversary this year. Seem more like 2.5 years than 25, but also I (Charlie) can't seem to remember much before we started our family almost 25 years ago. We are still in love and are looking forward to the next 25 years. While on the other hand Carol's mom and dad celebrated their 51st year of marriage. We do have a good example of things in the future as we work on each year together.

Uncle Bill, Carol's dads brother, passed away in February of this year. Carol hadn't seen him in years, but they had been communicating via email the last years. Even though he lived up in Canada, his passing still left us mourning his death. We pray that you his family will remember him as warmly as we do and will.

We have had several close friends going through very traumatic experiences the last few months also. Won't mention them by name, but one has dealt with a fire that destroyed some very important items to them and it will take a long time to recover from that. Another is dealing with a change in job after 20 some years and needing to deal with care providers for her mother along with a new job and all that goes with that. Another is fighting a very heroic battle with cancer for the 4th time and the doctors have not given her much hope this time around. Many things in our lives due to many things including these also. You know who you are and please know that we continue to pray for you and enjoy what time we have to spend together recently.

We have also been without much childcare most of this year. We have had one lady from an agency that helps on Sunday mornings so we can all go to church, but that is about it. We now have a lady that is supposed to start next week, we pray that things will work out with her. Having not been out alone for almost that year, we are looking forward to when we can get out for a Saturday afternoon and enjoy our time together.

Caleb is now in a different school. We knew that he would be graduating from West Valley School where he had been since in pre-school. We had assumed that he would follow the path of his two older brothers that went to West Valley and move to Miller High School where Curtis still attends, but no that was not to happen. The LAUSD has decided that the special Ed Jr. High students need to be separated from the Sr. High students. Something about them getting the same amount of class time as "normal" students in their age group. So now instead of having Curtis and Caleb on the same bus, we still have two different school busses coming every morning and afternoon along with the bus for Chris. Caleb gets on the bus at about 6:30 AM and returns anywhere between 4:00 and 4:45 PM. He has a LONG day and several hours on the bus every day. Not much surprise when he comes home in a bad mood and just wants to get his drink and relax by himself for a bit.

Caleb is still non-verbal and his diapering has begun to be more of a physical challenge for us especially when he isn't in one of his helpful moods. We continue to need your prayers for this situation and how we can continue to support Caleb and his "special" needs.

Charlie's Mom, Grma Pearl, and his sister Carol made it out for a visit in June. They were able to schedule their visit to coincide with our private school graduation night. They got to see / hear Charlotte sing her solo "Swing Low Sweet Chariot". We were all blessed by them being here and were saddened when they had to leave after their short visit.

We all, and I mean all, had another birthday since last Christmas, Chris is now 21 and is very proud of this and doesn't want us to forget it either. Charles also turned 21 in the early fall. Charlotte and Candace are now 15 year olds and Charlotte will be 16 soon. Curtis will turn 17 early in the year. Caleb and Claire will have birthdays between now and Christmas, Caleb turning 13 and Claire 6. Cora is now 10 and is growing up so fast. She is not the little girl anymore. Can you believe it that Clark is now 17 months old? He is up and running around the house. He is trying really hard to talk to us, but has a lot of work to do in that direction. He is also attempting some simple sign language. He got a good clean bill of health for his 15 month checkup. So healthy that they gave him a couple more shots. Boy did he like that! Camille is turning into a young girl also, she just recently turned 9 and is learning to be a helper here at home and in school. She tries really hard to do what she knows she should. Connor and Carter are our little boys and do I mean boys. With them being 7 and 3, they love to go dig in the dirt to build roads for their cars. He really enjoyed his 1st birthday party. He had a chocolate éclair and seemed to really enjoy the ceremonial eating / smashing it on the floor.

Carol's Aunt Elsie, Uncle Joey and Cousin Lee surprised us all with a visit during the summer. They just decided to drop in from Winnipeg one weekend and spend the weekend here. They stayed in a motel locally and spent the days with Carol's parents and then some time with us also. We are glad that the kids got a chance to meet them and of course the kids were all given special gifts from their Great Aunt and Uncle.

Our "Vacation" for this year turned out to be a couple nights in a motel where we enjoyed the pool, walking to neighboring restaurants for meals, taking walks in new areas and just being somewhere else other than home for a while. As usual it took a couple days back at home for Mom and Dad to get things back to normal. It is a lot of work to do these types of things with a large family, but the children love it and will, Lord willing, look back on them as fun family times together.

Our Thanksgiving Day celebration was blessed again. We had Grma, Grpa, Charles and Patti, Al and Kathie and . . . Let see how many was that? I think it was 19. But we still had a couple lunches worth of leftovers that the family enjoyed for the Friday and Saturday lunch following Thanksgiving Day. Grpa and Grma did most of the cooking at their house, they prepared all the fixings, mashed potatoes, several different vegetables, desserts, drinks. Everything except the turkey and gravy. We did the turkey(s) here again this year and it worked out great. Everything came together at the same place and the right time. Our Thanksgiving was a wonderful time of fellowship and sharing, a blessed time along with the year preceding it and, we pray, the year following.

We are thankful for many things that have happened this year. We have found a Church that has a Sunday school class with other special needs children in it. Our younger ones are fitting in pretty quickly. We just pray for continued guidance in this matter that we would be following the Lord's will in all things, not just the church.

Carol has had what seems to be a final diagnosis of the problem with her feet. It has turned out to be Reynaud's disease. This is an auto-immune disease, and we have found a Dr. that is familiar with it and is following up with treatments to manage the problems. So far things are not getting worse. With this disease it is normal for the warmer months to be better and with the cold weather upon us, Carol has some cream to apply and some pills that help in keeping the symptoms manageable.

As normal, we have had Dentist appointments in November and December. So far no cavities praise the Lord for that! We also have many continuing medical visits. Ongoing visits to the orthodontist for Charlotte's braces. She had to get the braces last June/July due to an impacted tooth that was sideways in the upper gums. The oral surgeon attached a small bracket on the tooth up in the gums and then the orthodontist attached it to the braces wire to pull it down in place. We pray that this will be fixed in full within the expected 24 months of braces.

Carol's mom and dad have finally gotten out of the house renovation business. They weren't really in that business, but it sure seemed like it. They have had to renovate two homes in the last couple years. One just so it could be rented and the other to cleanup after a small fire. Both homes are now rented and now Grpa is getting back into being Grpa instead of the guy working on the houses. I'm sure the little ones appreciate that. They have cut back some, however, they have taken a few trips to Laughlin this year. They have taken some of the older children to both the Granada Theatre and also to the Glendale Theatre. Most of the kids saw Pinocchio and the older ones saw "John Loves Mary" and then most recently "A Christmas Carol".

Some of us got to attend an "Eagle Scout" ceremony of a boy in our neighborhood. We have known the family for many years through church and also just from being in the same community.

Because of childcare problems, the Lord has used these times to allow us to take most of the kids with us on a Saturday afternoon. We have had some unique family times during this period. Some of these trips have been to the mall, shopping in Porter Ranch (the kids finally got to go to Wal-mart). Balboa Lake for bike riding and paddle boats, Hart Ranch in Newhall for a picnic and hiking. Thanks to our Aunt June and the family pass she provided as an early Christmas present we were also able to visit the Zoo one Saturday afternoon also. Another time was Travel Town at Griffith Park where all enjoyed the train ride and climbing on the big trains. Visiting a friends 1 acre back yard during a yard sale and checking out all the treasures found there. Al and Kathie are in the "Hauling Business" and always have lots of "good stuff" to check out whenever we get over there. Visited the animal shelter in Chatsworth one day, drove around the Van Nuys Airport and watched the planes take off and land and had many special dinners at restaurants which the kids really love.

We thank each of you for your caring, friendship, love, prayers and support during times of ups and downs, prayers are one thing we can all use. May each of you be blessed during this time we set aside to give honor to Jesus on the celebration of "His Birthday".

God bless and Love from all the Wybles,

Charlie, Carol, Chris, Curtis, Charlotte, Candace, Caleb, Cora, Camille, Connor, Claire, Carter and Clark.