Our Christmas

I’m back on Facebook and blogging after taking an extended break this month, so I figured I should share about our Christmas.  We had 8 family gatherings again, but this year they were more spread out, so we were thankful for that.  We had 1 at the beginning of December, 1 in the middle of December, 4 the week of Christmas, and 2 in January.  We had our own family Christmas in the evening on December 23.  We ordered pizza for supper, which is everyone’s favorite meal and I didn’t have to cook, so that’s always nice!  We save 2 Christmas children’s books for this time of year (I put them away the rest of the year), so I read one and Jared read one.  The one I read is from Mary’s perspective and throughout the book she says, “Tomorrow you will be king, but tonight you are my baby,” and it makes me almost cry every time.

This was Kiera’s present

Blake got some puzzles.  These were probably their favorite, though!

We always have Christmas with Jared’s Dad and Step-Mom on Dec. 25 and it’s one of my favorite days of the year.  It starts with brunch, then a big gift exchange.  In the afternoon we usually play a game, have snacks, and then have supper. 

This is what he gave me when I said, “Big smile!”

Roger the Rooster was a gift somebody received during our $1 gift exchange in our Bible study group 3 years ago and has since been passed on to people in our church for their birthdays.  I received him for the first time in October and my sister-in-law’s birthday was in December, so I figured it would look great in their new house, ha ha!  As you can see, Steve was quite bewildered until I explained.

The kids each got these great umbrellas and you can see in the lower corner that I got Ticket To Ride Europe

They both got new pajamas as well

Amanda got a book that had the word sex in it

Blake got a TinkerToys set and Kiera got a really great stamp set that included some cards

TJ + Amanda were told to close their eyes while their gift was brought into the room.  No, they’re not making out.

Their expressions when they saw….

…the beautiful headboard that Jared’s Dad made them!

Holding our favorite gifts…Jared got a Keurig and I got an ice cream maker!

We made it through Christmas and to all of our gatherings before the 5 days of fevers hit me at New Year’s and Jared the following week, so we were and are very blessed! :)

What God Has Been Saying

On Friday evening, I ended up at the ER, as most of you probably read on Facebook.  After struggling with the runs for 10 days, cutting out all wheat, dairy and sugar, I ended up running to the bathroom 6 times in 25 min. after eating a chicken salad with homemade dressing for supper.  I was so scared and what kept running through my mind was the fact that my Mom, my Grandma and my uncle all used to have Ulcerative Colitis.  I don’t know why my mind just went to one of the worst extremes.  It was not helpful!  After I got there, I called my Mom and she was at her friend’s house.  Her + her friends prayed for me, as well as others as I asked for prayer on Facebook before I left for the hospital.  I felt those prayers and as I sat in the ER for hours, God’s peace settled over me.  He told me two things.  The first one was, “You know, there are no ER’s in heaven.”  I was SO encouraged by that, as it’s a terrible place to be.  There was an old, overweight man sitting beside me coughing up phlegm and spitting it into his cloth the whole time I was there.  It was disgusting!  We have A LOT to look forward to!  The 2nd thing He said was, “Your times are in my hands.”  Yes, I can completely trust Him!  I’m so thankful that it appears I just had a virus.  God is good all the time.

Every year, I ask God for His Word for me for the year and this past year was joy.  Even though I experienced a lot of emotional pain, I also experienced a lot of joy as I kept counting my blessings in my thankful journal every day and the times that I focused on Jesus instead of on what was going on in my life.  God already gave me his word for this year and it’s “surrender.”  I said to Him, “Can’t we just stick with joy?  I like that one better.”  Surrender is hard, but I’m already learning more about that.  No matter how hard I try to eat right, which is good and no matter how I try to control things, I am realizing that I’m so not in control.  I need to trust God with my health, because my health comes from Him.  My body comes from Him, my whole life is from Him.  His plans are way better than mine, so I need to surrender my will to His.  He told me He wants to make my faith like gold.  I know the refining process is not always a fun one, but it will be so worth it!  I don’t know what God has in store for this year, but I know it’s good and I need to surrender every day to Him.  I pray we all grow in the Lord this year.  Happy new year!

December Pics

Here’s what we’ve been up to this month:

Hanging out together while it’s been SO cold outside (like –25)

Making faces

She’s the queen of faces

Eating freezies…I always stock up for the winter when it’s the end of summer and the store is clearing them out for $0.25/bag.

First attempt at making gluten-free sugar cookies.  At first I didn’t think they had turned out, but after I put them in the freezer, they tasted good.

Kiera followed Jared up and down the driveway while he snowblowed, which I thought was super cute.

The group of girls that Kiera is in dance class with

…and with their teacher

Blake’s Sunday School class at the Christmas program

My girls in their pretty dresses…Haley doing her classic scrunchy face

The gingerbread house we made last week

The back of it before it all fell apart

Next year we’ll try the gingerbread train and maybe that will work better?!  At least we had fun! :)

The Life-Changing Christmas Story

I've been thinking a lot about the Christmas story lately. It's such a familiar one that I think I have it mostly memorized. Some things have struck me about it, though, and I've been seeing it in a new way. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which was a "nowhere" town. It wasn't a prominent place or a great city. He was born to Mary, who wasn't royalty or anyone "important." Jesus was born in a barn. A BARN! The Creator of the entire universe, who could have been born in the biggest palace, was born in a barn with animals that don't usually smell good. Who were the first people the angels announced Jesus' birth to? Again, they could have gone to the kings + queens and all of the most important rulers, but they announced Jesus' birth to the shepherds. Shepherds were "nobodies" in those days. Oh, and when Herod found out about Jesus and was threatened by this new "king," he ordered that all of the baby boys 2 years old and under be killed in that area. The killings in Connecticut recently were horrendous and heartbreaking and I can't imagine that multiplied by 100 or however many little boys were killed. Nobody had heard a word from the Lord for 400 years and that was broken by a baby's cry. Jesus came during a very, very dark time to bring LIGHT! He left perfect heaven for this sin-filled earth to save us! I can't even put into words how grateful I am as I sit here with tears streaming down my face. My digestion problems have recently flared up really badly and I can't eat any Christmas treats this week as I'm on a super strict diet again. I could feel sorry for myself, and there have been moments when I have, but I have WAY too much to be thankful for as I see what Jesus has done for me. The magnitude of it blows me away! Merry Christmas everyone and praise God for who He is and what He has done!

Blake’s Birthday Party

Ya, so I’m over a month late on this one.  Story of my life these days when it comes to blogging.  We had Blake’s party a few days before his actual birthday.  I switched most of the pink streamers to blue ones, but left a few of the pink ones since there were going to be some girls at his party.  Plus, it was just a lot of work to switch them.

One of his favorite gifts was the very noisy truck on the right.  I told my friend I’m going to get her back and I already have some plans for a gift I’m going to buy, ha ha!  I put some duct tape over the speaker, so the sound is more muffled now.  I’m very surprised they haven’t noticed yet!

I picked up the Thomas tablecloth in the States, which Blake really liked.

I made him a monkey cake since he is silly like a monkey.  I was going to make it a monkey pooping because Blake is pretty much obsessed with poop, but that was too difficult to do.

This was him on his actual birthday, Nov. 6.

I left out the one of him with his finger up his nose.  Definitely the clown of the family!

Advent

This is the 2nd year we’ve done something for Advent.  Last year, Kiera had the typical “tear a link off a paper chain every day,” but she didn’t really understand what it was all about.  This year, I decided I wanted to do something more purposeful.  When I heard that Kiera’s school has a box to collect food for people in need, I felt that God wanted us to give to that.  So, every day I send a food item along with Kiera and she knows that it “goes in the box for the poor people” as she says it.  Instead of having a calendar where she gets a chocolate every day (and there is nothing wrong with that), we give something every day.  I hesitated to share this because the Bible talks about giving in secret, but I prayed about it and I checked my heart’s motives and I simply felt that God wants me to encourage others to make the days leading up to Christmas meaningful, in whatever way He’s leading you and your family.  It’s not about me, it’s about Him.  Also, whoever receives the food won’t know it’s from us and that’s good!  One of my friends is doing the Focus On The Family advent thing and I looked at it yesterday and it’s great! 

Yesterday in the van, Kiera said, “I want a doll for Christmas.  Can I have a doll?”  It actually made me sad because it’s the first time that she has understood the whole “I get presents at Christmas and I want this or that.”  It’s not wrong to want things or give each other gifts, but I want to be so careful not to get caught up in the whole materialism in our culture, which is a constant battle.  Of course it’s fun to receive gifts and I very much enjoy the gift exchange we have every year with Jared’s family.  There is nothing wrong with that.  With some family members, their top love language is gifts, so it really makes them feel especially loved.  I feel very blessed, too, when I receive gifts given in love.  I really want to emphasize the giving part of it to my kids, so I told Kiera yesterday that it is better to give than to receive and I told her that when we give, we store up treasure in heaven.  Of course, she didn’t understand that, but I will keep talking about that and trying to explain it in a way that she will get it.

One of my family members said that they didn’t want us to buy them anything and to instead take the money we would spend on them and give it to someone in need.  I love that!  Every year, I look forward to getting the World Vision catalogue and picking a couple of things out of there.  I hope to get my kids involved this year and they can help pick something from there.  I want to bless our families this year but also bless people who can’t give back.  It feels so good and that is one way we can give gifts to Jesus!  I think of how God gave us His Son and how Jesus gave his life for us and my gifts feel so small, but I just want to do what God is calling me to do and I know that He can use any gift, big or small.  May we all be a blessing to those around us and glorify Jesus in all that we do!

Confession Session

Jared and I often joke about how he is a geek. He is obsessed with cell phones, particularly the iPhone and he regularly reads iMore, which is the #1 site for iPhone, iPod, iPad, etc. He also watches a Mobile Nations video every Monday which talks about what is going on in the cell phone world. Makes me laugh and shake my head! Confession: I am a geek, too! No, I'm not obsessed with my cell phone and I don't feel naked when I don't have it with me. I am a geek when it comes to my blog. I have regularly changed the html code to make the columns or header wider or narrower, depending on what layout I have. I regularly change the layout, which isn't hard to do. I also change the colors of my titles and links regularly, using a hex color code website. I find the color I want and then change the code on my blog. I also had to change the html code to put post dividers on my blog, which automatically show up in between each blog post. I also look for different blog backgrounds and put them onto private blogs that I have (I don't post on them), so that when I want to change the look of my blog, I just look at the other blogs I have and decide which background I want to switch to. I have kept all this a secret for years and decided it was time to confess! Feels good but also a bit embarrassing, ha ha! Are any of you secret geeks and brave enough to admit it? ;) I might make this confession session a regular thing, so watch out!