Holiday Week

Walking under the lights

 Opening presents with Mandy's folks

All the grands together for lunch:

Playing board games with one of the cousins

  And, finally, Christmas morning arrives.  Santa emptied most of his plate, drank all of his milk, and left some things in the stockings.  

We look through our stockings first, and see what Santa left for us.  Then, we had breakfast of cinnamon and caramel rolls.  

Finally, we opened the gifts under the tree.  

Sometime around lunch, the ice began to fall and coat the trees.  It looked like we would have a glazed Christmas.

And then, just after the sun set, the snow began to fall

and fall

and fall.

This is the beauty we woke to December 26:

 Playing in Christmas snow is a bit magical, don't you think?

What Triggers Gladness

The kids decorated the tree with their ornaments not too long ago….even sneaking a few of their favorites from their parents’ own stash of Christmas baubles. 

And so, for many days, two Christmas tubs sat along the wall of our bedroom.  Add to that the stacks of packages arriving from relatives, and it more than looked (and still looks) like we are ready to move out.  Boxes, boxes, boxes. 

(It’s not really that bad, but it is often so fun to exaggerate!)

So, in order to make my very neat and wonderful husband a tad less queasy to his very organized tummy, I finally went through our treasure trove of ornaments. 

Our tree, already heavy-laden with the kids’ décor, did not offer much room for the parents’ things (I just added all of our children’s years together, and there is no wonder there is so little room on our tree….there is, without D’s and my ornaments, 35 collective years worth already!), but we wedged what we could into any space we could find. 

As we unwrapped ornaments and laid them out on the table we couldn’t help but count our blessings. 

We remembered the friendships from childhood, the new steady friendships formed our first year of marriage, the labor of love from our own parents and siblings, Not all of the ornaments are pretty.  Some of them are downright ugly…and smudged…and dirty from little hands, grown big now, holding them every Christmas.  Oh!!  All those lovely memories associated with different ornaments. 

I love this part of Christmas.  It draws my heart and thoughts nearer to God and nearer to those who have meant so much, at one time or another, and the memory of those family and friends is still precious and encouraging and meaningful.  Because of their love for us, the memory that these ornaments evoked, still teach us about God’s wonderful grace, His desire to give us good things, to be with us every step of the way, to decorate our life with love, laughter and meaningful joy and wisdom.  

Silly things That make me Cry

Yep.  This is one of those things!  

Tears.  Me.  Crying!  

Not really because someone recycled.

It's the applause that does it to me every time.

Applaud God's good work in someone today.  See the good He does through the willing hands of others.

Then listen carefully, 

because the applause of Heaven is 

more glorious 

than what the lady in this video received on this day!

Decked Out

Our decorations do not vary much from year to year, but it is always fun to post the finished (or in our case, almost finished) results:

We usually turn on Christmas music one night and help the kids unwrap their ornaments so they can hang them on the tree.  After all the kids' ornaments were hung, I went to inspect the tree and saw the limb below 

Pictured below is the artist for the above branch

So, a few days later I sat down with my cup of coffee to view the tree and the mantle.  I got the idea of hanging the stockings on a curtain rod from Pinterest.  This year we will have all of one side of the family coming to our house and we needed a way to add 6 more stockings once they arrive....

with the possibility of even a few more for the dogs.  

The photo below is the same as the one above, but I just found a very neat option to make the picture starry.  So I thought I would give it a try.  I even love how some of the sequins on the stockings are reflecting the light, as well as some glitter on the Santa figurine in the forefront of the picture:

  

Another Pinterest-inspired project.  I found that there are easier ways than the way I decided to make "Subway Art", but since I do not have a Cricut OR Modge-Podge, I had to play with stickers and paint and touching up different areas.  It was a lot of fun and I decided to do another one on an even BIGGER canvas.  

Ai-yi-yi!  

This one took a while and did not turn out exactly as I had planned.  I will need to do some touch-ups on this one as well.  The photo below is just the beginnings of the project, not the finished result.