【推荐1】When I was young, I never had a special Christmas gift that I dreamed of and was crazy about. I know I _______ a lot of great Christmas presents as I grew up. Chatty Cathy, Baby Thumbelina, Little Miss No Name…I just don't remember _______ them. Although my parents had their financial _______, they always made Christmas special for their four children. Dad worked a(n) _______ job as a referee in high school basketball games to _______ a little more cash, and Mum was the queen of bargain shopping. The gifts _______ have been inexpensive, but there was more than enough under the tree.

Stored in happy memories are the family _______: helping Mum and Dad drag the Christmas decorations out of the attic, going with Dad to _______ the tree from the Kiwanis, and decorating the tree _______ strings of blue lights and Christmas lasting days and days and days. The piles of ________ under our tree wrapped in newspaper are more memorable than ________ was wrapped. The act itself of unwrapping and ________ seeing what was beneath the newspaper was ________ and memorable. But the most clear are the images of smiles, the sounds of ________, not the images of toys or clothes.

It's the ________ of Christmas. The best moments, the happy moments were not the gifts,________ the togetherness, the love of family. Even in the occasional quarrels of brothers and sisters, even in the ________ of late nights, even in the sometime stress of it all.

Christmas should not ________ on what's on our gift lists. For it's not about what gifts we ________ or receive, but about what we do, what we experience.

Those are the happy moments that ________.

【推荐2】As Christmas is coming, there are presents to be bought, cards to be sent, rooms to be cleaned. Parents are _______ with difficult jobs of hiding presents from curious young children. If the gifts are large, this is sometimes a real _______. On Christmas Eve, young children find the excitement almost unbearable.They are _______ between the wish to go to bed early so that Father Christmas will bring their presents quickly and the wish to _______ up late so that they will not miss the fun.The wish for gifts usually proves stronger.But though children go to bed early, they often lie_______ for a long time, hoping to get a short look at Father Christmas.

Last Christmas, my wife and I _______ managed to hide a few large presents in the storeroom. I feared the moment when my son, Jimmy, would _______ me where that new bike had come from, but _______ he did not see it.

On Christmas Eve, it took the children hours to go to sleep. It must have been nearly _______when my wife and I went quietly into their room and began filling stockings. Then I pushed in the________ I bought for Jimmy and left it beside the Christmas tree.We knew we would not get ________sleep that night, for the children were ________ to get up early.At about five o’clock the next morning, we were woken by loud sounds coming from the children’s room－they were shouting excitedly!________ I had time to get out of bed, young Jimmy came riding into the room on his new bike, and his sister, Mary, ________ close behind pushing her new baby carriage. Even the baby arrived, he moved ________ the hands and knees into the room dragging a large balloon behind him. Suddenly it burst. That woke us up completely. The day had really begun with a bang.

The little country schoolhouse was heated by an old coal stove. A little boy had the job of coming to school early each day to start a _________ and warm the room before his teacher and his classmates got there.

One morning they _________ to find the schoolhouse burning. They dragged the little boy out of the building more dead than alive. Then he was _________ taken to a nearby country hospital.

The doctor told the boy’s mother that because the lower part of his body was _________ burnt, he couldn’t use his legs anymore. However, the _________ boy made up his mind that he would walk. Unluckily his thin legs _________ hung there，all but lifeless.

Finally he returned home from the hospital. Every day his mother would press his little legs, but there was no feeling, no control, _________. Yet his determination that he would walk was as _________ as ever.

When he wasn’t in bed, he would sit in a wheelchair. One sunny day his mother wheeled him out into the yard to get some fresh air. This day, instead of _________ there, he __________ himself from the chair and pulled himself across the grass, dragging his __________ behind him.

He worked his way to the white fence (栅栏) around the yard. With great effort, he raised himself __________ on the fence. Then, he began dragging himself along the fence, __________ that he would walk. He started to do this every day. There was nothing he __________ more than to develop life in those legs.

In the end, through his determination he did __________. Gradually he began to walk to school, then to run to school, to run for the joy of runn-ing. Later in college he made the running team.

Still later in Madison Square Garden this determined young man, Dr. Glenn Cunningham, ran the world’s fastest mile!

【推荐3】Dale Schroeder was a simple, modest man from Iowa, the USA. He ended up ______the lives of 33 people forever. Schroeder worked as a carpenter（木匠）at the same________for 67 years. He grew up poor and had never______in his life.

When he died in 2005, no one could have guessed how_____Schroeder really was. “This is because he lived a________life and worked really hard,” his friend Steve Nielsen said.

Schroeder had______a fortune over the years. He had no wife or children, so before he died, he went to his lawyer with a_____for his money. “ He said, ‘I never got the_______to go to college. So I’d like to______kids go to college,’” Nielsen said, “When I found out that he had US$3 million, I nearly______out of my chair.”

Schroeder’s friend was____ by his secret fortune. So were the strangers who_______pieces of it.

Kira Conard was one of them. In high school, she had the______to attend college, but not the money. “It made me feel______. Like, I want to do this. I have this goal,_______ I can’t get there just because we can’t pay for school.”

That’s when her phone rang. “ I ____ in tears immediately,” Conard said. The man on the other end of the phone told her about Schroeder.

Schroeder left special _____for his money: send small town kids in Iowa to college.

“ He wanted to help kids that were like him, that _____would not have an opportunity to go to college without his______,” Nielsen explained.

Schroeder ended up paying 33 strangers’ college tuition fees（学费）. They got together earlier this month to______the man who changed their lives. They’re now doctors, teachers—and friends.