A handmade Christmas....well almost.

All the weeks of sewing, knitting, stuffing, painting, crocheting, and baking paid off...... (As well as all of papa's woodworking)

Christmas Eve...new pillowcases and Christmas Jammies....

Nicky, Mary and Tadpole

And momma made them. :)

That new pink bike from Santa...

New

Crocheted hats.....

Angela and Luisa

A custom-designed (By Nick) crossword puzzle for Papa...

Sock Monkeys...(made by Nick and Momma)

Wooden Toys made by papa!... A pull cricket, boat and airplane...

And two lonely presents left under the tree......

Waiting for Olivia...

Our 2008 Christmas photo...

I almost let December go by, without a picture this year...since I was hoping Olivia would be in it..but I am glad we went ahead and captured our family in 2008.

Happy New Years...almost!

Christmas Eve..

it came....every year, something happens, that makes true Christmas come in my heart...and it just came.

All the kids are in bed, Mary already sleeping, Nick and Tad trying really hard to fall asleep, so Santa can come, wearing new flannel Pjs momma made for them, sleeping on new Christmas pillowcases. I turned out the boys light, tucked them in, snuggled with prayers.

A few minutes later, I could hear Nick reading something outloud to Anthony. I could only catch a word here and there, but since it was going on a while, I crept to their door to listen.... Nick was reading Luke chapter 2, to Tadpole. No Santa stories, no present guesses, no jingle bells...but rather "the glory of the Lord shown round about them".

My heart swelled within me. He finished with, hey, this is the verse I just memorized at school..

"For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." (Luke 2: 30-32)

I need no other gifts, nothing wrapped or made. This is the best gift to a momma's heart, boys who make sound effects, have pillow fights, are loud and rowdy, and then settle down into the excitement which is Christmas and are drawn to the true word of God declaring our most wonderous gift. God sets eternity in the hearts of men. Thank you Lord....

After he finished reading by flashlight, I heard Nick sing:

"O come O come Emmanuel, and ransome captive Israel..."

Yes Lord, come. Christmas has come.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Emmanuel

Thank you Jesus, you came.
And you still come....
Flood our hearts.
Flood our lives.

God with us,
be with us,
be with mine...
Those I hold close in my heart.

Peel us away from the avarice,
filling up our inn and
leaving no room for you.

Humble beginnings,
yet not the beginning,
In the beginning was God,
and you were there...

From glory to humility to humilitation
To bring us to glory

Thank you.

Making Christmas

We have been so busy, I realize I have not posted in a while...we have been making Christmas....each of the kids are making presents this year, for each other, rather than buying, so we have been quite busy. Momma too. But here are a few pictures of what we have been doing the last couple of weeks. Church Christmas play, I had Nick as Joseph, Mary as a little lamb and Taddy as a giraffe. Mary's school play she was a lady bug, we decorated our tree...which I may have posted before, did lots of yummy baking, knitting, sewing, gluing, cutting, wrapping. Watched every Christmas movie made....and now we are done to the finishing touches.....whew! I am glad we all have some vacation after Christmas day to unwind a bit.

May all things be Merry and Bright! Merry Christmas!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

In honor of Frosty

My children have been enamored with the three Santa Clause movie's this season. The Tim Allen ones... Taddy painted a scene.sign and put it on his door, North Pole....and they a have been wishing for snow! We heard it might snow yesterday, but it only rained.

This morning, I go downstairs in a freezing house...

I have the thermostat set to automatically heat up around 6 am, so I could not understand why it was so cold....

I find the thermostate turned to COOL rather than heat. The other day, it was turned on HEAT up to 80 degrees, and Taddy was the culprit, so I thought he might be at it again.

I asked him about it.

He said, yes, it was him, and that it was suppose to snow yesterday and it is cold in the North Pole! So he was turning it down, so it would get cold enough to snow!

I told him, that it is the tempature outside, not inside, that made it snow and even Santa's house is warm and cozy inside!

Today was "winter wonderland" day at the boy's school. they dressed like they lived in the snow.... snowboots, sweaters, hats, gloves, jackets...and had cocoa at school. Nick had on so many shirts and sweaters, he was as puffy as the pillsbury dough boy!

I did not know they got cocoa at school today....I had a tray set up for them when they arrived home, with cocoa, marshmellows and a bowl of popcorn.

After dinner and homework, they are watching Mary Poppins....they have never seen it before.

Firetrucks, sirens, and trucks with a sleigh, reindeer, lights and Mr and Mrs Santa just drove by in our neighborhood and we all ran out in the cold to see it.

It may not be snowing here, but it is chilly and frosty!

Queen Momma and her minions...

Yesterday I was working on something in my room, the master bedroom in the house, and Mary came in and was playing as I was working. After a little bit she started walking around the room, touching this and that and looking it all over...then she said:

"You have a bathroom in your room. Your room is big. Are you the queen or something??!"

lol. I said, yes, I am Queen Momma and you are princess Qing Qing!

The queen and her subjects had a great weekend. Lots of crafting presents, watching Christmas movies, wishing for snow....at church Sunday, all three of my little thespians were in the play...Nick was Joseph, and pulled off his embarassing line to Mary the mother of Jesus. "Lets go honey!" Tadpole was an adorable donkey/giraffe, with an amazing look of shock when he finds the manger, empty, no baby and Mary was an adorable little lamb, Baaa-baaa right on que. I left my photo downloader at the office, so I will have to post the pictures later, but they were precious.

Tuesday night we have Mary's school play and then the acting for the season will be complete!

Queen Momma has lots to do today, I hope you have a great day!

GROW UP!

OK. I am the grown-up, so act like it!

Just had to tell myself that.

Frustrated with myself on some dumb, ostrich with her hand stuck in the sand stuff...but on the other hand...my head is out now, sandy, but out...and there is HOPE. There is always hope because my God is a God of hope and believes in me, has a plan for me, faults, struggles and lacks included,...and wants me to trust in Him daily!

So I will act like it.

(PS..that is me at Disneyland waaaaaayyy waaaaay back.)

Hanging on for dear life! Glad God is steering now.

We will not fuss, we will not fuss, we will not fuss, we will not fuss.....

So exasperated with the fussies lately....hours of room time was applied to the grouchy bears last night.

A "downtime" night seemed to do us good. Practiced spelling words, looked at books and Anthony ended up WANTING to play with Mary...

That is after I got home and discovered my bedroom door broken, wood actually split, after to wrestling bears got out of hand.

Bears get grouchy, they do to their den. Seperate dens for a while, and then the same den.....

And then, an amazing thing happened...out of their conversations flowed grace and salt....

Thank you Lord..and Taddy even said, you know when I try to force my way, the fuss drags on and on, but it I just say, ok, you can have it...then its over and we all feel good.

hmmmmm...... maybe this will be catching?

Wrapping it up...

Isn't this picture cute? This is my NIcholas about 7 years ago!

I finished reading Colossians today. (I have been reading the Bible, backwards, a little at a time. I started in 2001, and have just made it to Colossians...so you see how s l o w I am going.)

As Paul was wrapping up his letter to the church, in the last 12 verses, three phrases stood out to me.

(v8) "that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts"

(v12) "He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God"

(v18) "Remember my chains"

I thought about, how often, if circumstances are less than ideal, we often want to hide our circumstances. I know, between my mom and I , we often find ourselves "sparing" each other, so we will not cause the other person concern or fret. But knowing the circumstance lends itself be to open to encouragement. On the other hand, there are many around us, that if we truly knew their circumstance, we would jump to encourage their hearts. So perhaps...we should just focus on encouraging, whether we know or not.

I thought about wrestling in prayer. What does that look like? Sound like? Do I wrestle in prayer for others? Do I feel so strongly about something that I would want spend the time wrestling in prayer about it? Why is wrestling necessary? Jacob did it. Epaphras does it for brothers and sisters in the church of Colosse.

And remember my chains..... bondage. Something from which someone needs deliverance.... look at them, with some compassion, rather than frustration, that they are in chains, and perhaps need some encouragement and some wrestling prayer.

So then I asked myself:

Who do I need to encourage in heart?
Who do I need to wrestle for in prayer?
And who do I need to remember is in chains?

Thoughts to fuel my prayer time...

A weekend full of Grace and Salt...

Gingerbread and pine trees, saxaphones and saws,
shaded shepherds, prisoned leaves,
This weekend saw them all....

We had a very full weekend... Here are my little minions, right before the Christmas Program at the boys school.

(My kids chuckle when I call them little minions....It oringinates from the French word: mignon, which actually means "darling". Webster's definition is: a servile (slave) dependent, follower, or underling.)

Nicholas played the saxophone in the 5th grade band, which was the opening to the Christmas program. He then played a character named Matthew, who was a shepherd in the school play. The story was a play about...a play. :) He loved it when the shepherd donned sunglasses and did a jazzy number.

Cute little Tadpole sang part of a quartet for one song.....











































Saturday we packed up the minivan with Nanny and Papa too and went up to the apple orchard area to "hunt and cut" down our Christmas tree.

Nick, Anthony, Momma (me) and Grandpa all got turns with the saw. After some hard work and effort, Nick did the final push that timbered our tree.



After strolling about a bit and enjoying apple cider and a slice of pie, we came down the hill, with our catch tied to the top of the van and set about decorating...
















My lovely momma, aka Nanny!



















Tadpole, with a yuletide "cool" going on...














































My kids each have a special box of their own ornaments, with a new one to add each year. Part of the fun of decorating is rediscovering their treasures and deciding just where they are to be placed on the tree.



There was a little argument (more on arguments later) on who would put on the Angel tree topper. I am sad to say, rather than grace prevailing, she was enthroned twice.






































I already mentioned in another post that we celebrated the "Day of Candles" with Angela out on the driveway on Sunday night. http://sandeefamily.blogspot.com/2008/12/da-de-las-velitas.html




On Sunday we also put up the outdoor lights, and the kids raked their leaf pile off the lawn. I was sad to find my little minions fussing a lot this weekend. We talked about it, prayed about it, tried at times, and succombed at times.

I shared with them on Sunday, a verse from my morning devotions, Col 4:6: "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. "

We talked about our words to each other being full of Grace...meaning mercy, kindness, gentleness, overlooking what irritates us...and seasoned with salt. I mentioned how salt makes things more tasty, and also is used to make them last longer (a perservative) and asked why do you think God used salt with what we say?

Nick chimed in, if we talk full of Grace it will "taste" better to folks and the effect of our conversation will last longer. :) Yes, it will.

For rest of the weekend, things would pop-up where one or the other would chime in...that was full of Grace and Salt...or this needs more Grace and Salt.

That afternoon, Tadpole, raking the leaves with Mary, was getting pretty upset with her. She kept "squeeking" about the leaves being bad guys, and she was capturing them and putting them into the "jail" (The trashcan.) She kept repeating it and repeating it and repeating it and repeating.....as she has a tendency to do at times, and Anthony was getting more and more irritated and verbal with his irritation. I pulled him asside for a minute and whispered..Taddy, this is working in your favor...as long as Mary thinks she is playing and putting bad guys in jail, she is working hard to help you scoop up all the leaves.... The light dawned...he then joined in with her pretense. Every few minutes he would stop and say, "Mom. this is fun and is full of "glory"! " lol. He was trying to remember Grace and Salt, but put the word glory in its place.

But it was full of glory. When our conversation is full of grace, and seasoned with salt, it is full of God's glory.

Hope you have a blessed glory-salted week!

Día de las Velitas

Dec. 7: A group of children light candles during a Christmas lighting ceremony in Bogota. The Day of the Candles, the unofficial start of the Christmas season in the country, is one of the most traditional holidays of Colombia. It is celebrated on Dec. 7, on the eve of the Immaculate Conception, which is a public holiday in Colombia.

Día de las Velitas, The Day of the Candles, is celebrated in Colombia on Dec 7th, on the eve of a public, religious holiday started by the Catholic church called, the Immaculate Conception. This day is the unofficial start of the Christmas season in the country.

On this day, people place candles and paper lanterns on their windows, balconies, porches, sidewalks, streets, parks and squares, in short, everywhere they can be seen, in honor of the Virgin Mary. The celebration of the Day of the Candles dates to 1854.

Last night Angela and Luisa invited us to join in with them on this celebration... The boys loved trying to keep the candles lit, with the little breeze that was happening and Mary enjoyed the cookies! :) Each candle had the name of a friend, family member, or other valued person, close to their heart.

I love Angela bringing some of her countries traditons to our family. Thank you Angela... I am going to try to remember Dec 7th, and honor it in our family for years to come. The pictures are a bit blurry, taken by candlelight, but you get the idea....