The First Moon Mission on Christmas Eve 1968

Dear Greta, thank you so much for sharing your Christmas Memories with us. My favorite memory when I was young was that each Christmas Eve we went to church, then to my grandmother's house with my cousins for supper, after which we opened presents to each other. 

When we got home, my parents stayed up very late and put up the tree so Christmas morning was the very first time we saw the beautifully decorated tree. It was just magical for us! 

In 1968, we all gathered around the TV to watch the first manned mission to the Moon. It orbited the moon on Christmas Eve. The astronauts shared pictures of the Earth from the Moon and then they read from the Bible..."In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth..." It was awesome! And Opa then gave me a beautiful Moonstone necklace as a memento of the evening! 

My favorite memory of you girls at Christmas one of them was when we gave you Disney Princess costumes as your "pickle prize". As soon as you put them on, complete with wigs, you broke into peels of laughter that made all the adults laugh so hard, some of us actually cried! 

Opa remembers when he was 7 or 8 his fathers boss took them up in his private plane and let Opa sit at the controls. He even flew them over Opa's grandparents' farm. When 

I asked Opa for another Christmas memory, he said the best was at a Christmas party when we met for the first time. He said it was love at first sight!! Wasn't that sweet?!! 

I'm hoping you had a great Christmas. I'm looking forward to next Christmas when we can be together again! Love, Grammy and Opa (Greta Jane's grandparents)