12 Days of Christmas for My Missionary!

12 Days of Christmas for My Missionary!

On the first day of Christmas

Do you hear what I hear?

Joyous harmonies and melodies

Quite pleasing to the ear!


 This Christmas stocking

 Filled with goodies and toys

 To relive your childhood

 And then share with more boys.

Christmas Day Three

Something merry to wear

To add to your collection ~

You’ll have plenty to spare!

On the fourth day of Christmas

This will be something nice:

A box of cool presents

To leave you smelling like spice?

On this fifth day of Christmas

You’ll laugh when you spy

These favorite sea creatures 

I’m not gonna lie!

And on this sixth day of Christmas

You’ll have sweet dreams

As you get warm and cozy

With one of your favorite teams!

Today's gift, 
If you really do care

 Is something special
 You'll need for your hair.

 We know for this mission
 You've truly been called ~  

 But your greatest fear before returning,

Is that you'll start to go bald!

 This eighth Christmas present

 Is refreshing and blue

 Please don’t wear too much

 Just a small spray will do!


Today’s gift is one

That's sure to make you smile,

Too bad you can't enjoy it

For at least a little while.

 This tenth holiday gift

 Is something you’ll need

 Morning, noon and night

 As you ponder and read.

Now this bag full of goodies,

 Some of them sweet

 On Christmas day eleven

 You’ll eat, eat, eat, eat!

And Finally it’s here   -

 The Big Christmas day!

 I’ve so little room

 But so much to say!

 Today is the day

 To celebrate His birth

 There will be much rejoicing

 All over the Earth!

This Christmas present

 Is sure to make you smile

 As you see lots of faces

 You haven’t seen in a while

Remember all these people

 Miss and love you too!

  And wish many blessings

To always shine on you. 

Busy Days

The last couple of days have been pretty busy.  I am still decorating, little by little.   Yesterday mom came over and we wrapped presents for Mark.  In fact I still have a couple yet to wrap.  I'm planning on making some treats to send to him as well, maybe some Puppy Chow.   Not really puppy chow, of course, but a snack made with Chex cereal, chocolate and peanut butter - very yummy!  He has lots of presents coming - 12 in fact. The plan is that he will open one gift each day for 12 days before Christmas.  He promises that he won't open them all at once - but Greg did when I sent the 12 Days of Christmas to him.  I'll write a little verse to go with each day, such as . . . . . 

Today's gift, if you really do care

Is something special you'll need for your hair.

We know for this mission you've truly been called ~  

But your greatest fear before returning,

is that you'll start to go bald!

Can't reveal what it is though - not yet, anyway, just in case he has the opportunity to glance at my blog!  Well that verse only took a few minutes; so maybe after an hour I'll be done!  Hmmmm. . . 

And today, Mom came again.  If it weren't for her, the other Christmas tree would likely not be up.  But she came and encouraged me to lets get going with the other tree and so we did and here it stands.  I was then motivated to venture into my storage room to find the ornaments.  These are actually my favorite ones, because they're all the special ones the kids have created over the years, plus other memorable ones.  Okay, so it took literally half the day to get this little tree up!  I'm not even kidding.  After my joy in only 15 minutes  spent getting the pre-lit 9 footer up; this one was a major pain in the you know what.  First the branches were not all in the box, so that required me to go back to the storage area to find the missing ones.  If you'd ever seen this storage area, you would understand my frustration.   But I found them - Problem solved, right?  WRONG!!!  Parts of the stand were also missing; which I already knew, but I knew how to improvise!  WRONG again!  My plan was to put the tree in a tree stand that we had for real Christmas trees.  It had worked fine in the past, but this year, not so much.  We got it standing, lights strung - and then it started leaning.  Eventually it was no longer leaning, but closer to lying!  But after much rigging and muttering and threatened crying, we finally got it up.  And it's in the corner, where it belongs for causing so much commotion!  But it's pretty and so far behaving itself nicely.  As I have been writing, Angel, our Cocker Spaniel was attempting to lay down under it; that's one of her favorite corners.  "Don't you dare", I scolded.  She retreated, head hanging.  I don't understand what it is about the whole tree putting up thing that makes me feel so unChristmaslike; that is if it takes longer than 15 minutes!

Do You Know the Real Reason We Celebrate Christmas?

As I was fixing Garrett's bowl of cereal this morning, I overheard a conversation between him and Gracie, one of the little girls that comes over to catch the bus.  

He was showing off our Advent Calendar, one of my favorite Christmas decorations that we've had since Greg was a baby.  Unfortunately one of the Wise Men has long since disappeared.  

Anyway back to the conversation - "Gracie, do you know the real reason we celebrate Christmas?"  

"It's Jesus's birthday", she replied.

"Yep, you're right!"

Her twin sister Marissa comes over to see what they're doing.

"Marissa, do you know the real reason we celebrate Christmas?" 

. . . . . . . . .

I think he gets it! - Pretty smart for a 6 year old.

Follow the Star

Tonight for family night we viewed a short clip depicting the visitation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary.  It can be found at BibleVideos.org and was just long enough for my kids to sit through it.  There's a total of 6  short movies so we'll hopefully get through all of them by Christmas.  We sang Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  It was short and sweet which equals perfect for our family nights!  





Afterwards at bedtime, I started reading Garrett this favorite pillow book that we bring out each Christmas.  He wondered why the Angel appeared to Mary in the daytime during the movie, but it was nighttime in the storybook.  Well, all I can say is that I was glad he was at least paying attention.  Alas, it was short lived and we couldn't make it to the 3 Wise Men he got so fidgety, actually obnoxious was how I described it.  And off to bed he went - not happily, I'm afraid.  So we'll learn more about the 3 Kings tomorrow.  I promise, Garrett, really.

The First Ornament

I'm not stressing about getting everything done in a hurry this year. So as a result, my house is being decorated a little a time.  This weekend was productive.  I was able to finally convince three of my kiddos and a friend of theirs to haul up most of the Christmas boxes from our storage room.  There is still stuff down there in the basement, but I'm not stressing to get down there to find it. Anyway, most of the decorations are out; most of the ornaments  on the main tree.  The top is kind of bare, but the bottom branches are quite full, courtesy of short people with little hands.  I need to enlist the help of a taller individual to get it complete.  


This is a picture of the first decoration of this Christmas season, well not counting the Christmas tree!  


Yes, it's half snowman/half football.  And yes it's adorned in purple and gold instead of red and green.  Gregory had the honor of hanging this little guy on Saturday night, following the LSU win over Georgia in the SEC Championship game.

He's now surrounded by lots of red and green.  There's a little black and gold one hanging nearby too!  Imagine that!  They are new, purchased while home in Louisiana last January.  I was so excited when I bought them because they reminded me so much of Greg. And now he's home, ever-present and yelling and clapping when there's a team from Louisiana playing football!  And what a year to be an LSU or Saints fan!


So it was a good weekend.  Football aside, it's beginning to look a LOT like Christmas; now to start working on it sounding and feeling more like it too!
  

Praying for the Christmas Spirit

This is one of my favorite holiday pictures of my kids.  This was taken 5 years ago and Greg was just complaining the other day how he didn't like doing this.  I guess we kept taking pictures over and over to try to find the perfect one.  Well, I think this one is pretty close to perfect.


It leaves me wondering, however, what I'm going to do for our Christmas card this year.  Lindsay won't be home until the 19th and of course Mark won't be with us at all this year.  This will be the third year that our family is not ALL together for Christmas. That makes me kind of sad, plus it just frustrates the whole Christmas card thing. I guess, I'll have to do something with individual pictures yet again.  


Oh well, I'll have to contemplate this dilemma later.  By the end of the day my house and tree will be decorated!  I'm hoping the Christmas music will help to lighten my mood, because the kids are seriously depressing it right now.  Perhaps the music will lighten their moods as well - I'm praying!

The Real Reason

As I get ready to dash and make my sweet potatoes for the ward Christmas party, I remember a fun picture from the annual church celebration 6 years ago - the real reason for all the hooplah!

Yes, They're Pretty Special

Last night I had the pleasure of going to dinner at Red Robin with my special sister, Stephanie and her special friend, Scott.  And it was truly a PLEASURE!  They were just purely enjoyable to be around!  Nothing was more important to them than the fact that they were in each other's company.  Stephie was girlishly giddy at times which I thought was so refreshingly sweet!  We were celebrating her 38th birthday and I left thinking that I could have easily scrapped the wrapped present - one hour with her sweet and special suitor was all she wanted or needed!  Acceptance, love, friendship, pure delight - those are true gifts.  And it was a gift to me - to be able to watch them and enjoy their conversation.

A dear friend has often voiced the sentiment of what it must be like to be in their world; that is the world of special people like Stephanie and Scott.  I think it would probably be a joyous place to be!  That's the word that keeps coming to my mind - JOY!  The absolute PLEASURE of being with your best friend.  (Although I made the mistake of calling them best friends, and Scott quickly set me straight.  They're not just friends didn't I know that? )  But that unconditional ACCEPTANCE is true friendship, even though Scott may not realize it.

So even though it wasn't my birthday, I think I received the ultimate gift!  It was a lesson in kindness, acceptance, love!   I began to ponder how judgemental, selfish and unaccepting I am.  As we embark upon this Christmas season, my prayer is that I can be more like my special companions and simply accept others as they are, without condition.  And maybe go a step further and not only find acceptance, but find joy in our everday experiences and most importantly in our relationships with those we love!  It will likely take me a while to find my way into that special world they occupy, but I think it definitely worth trying.

So thanks to Stephanie and Scott for what I'll call an early Christmas present.  It was fun to smile and laugh for so long!  Especially when Scott said, "Steph, let me finish, can I talk now?" Definitely no such thing as a Silent Night around those two!