Friday, December 16, 2011

~ faith like a child ~

C
onstant Praise and Worship
singing, a laugh that will
warm a cold bitter heart in a
second, and a beautiful heart
for her precious Lord and Savior.


Those are just a few things that you get
wrapped up so neatly in one little sister package.

Now that we have a kid in the house that is in school...

WE got to go to a Christmas Program!


She actually had two Christmas programs -

One for church
and one for school.

We were able to make it to the one for her school...

and for that,
she was appointed to be
THE Angel.

Now granted there were about 50 "angels".

BUT
she was listed in the program as "THE Angel".


And my oh my what a beautiful angel she made.

We were so proud.


They sang about 10 songs and they were all precious.

It is a pleasure to watch Casi be a parent.

She is such a good mama.

She had Sis in a beautiful black and white Christmas dress,
her hair was perfectly twisted into a little
halo on the top of her head,
her ends were neatly trimmed and curled,
and her face was lightly glowing from a dab-or-two of
mama's body shimmer.



Her little legs were in warm black tights and she was wearing pretty little
patent leather black shoes...

she reminded me of the little fairies on Sleeping Beauty when they were flying
through the air and how they looked like little electrical outlets.

I was sure if Sis could
take flight she'd look exactly the same as those little fairies do.



When we were at her program, and the program had just barely began -
Sis couldn't see us.

She couldn't find us for a little over 5 minutes.

We were sitting pretty far in the back and as she made her way to "THE Angel" spot...
I watched as her little round face searched over the audience.

She looked left
to right.

Over and Over.

Looking for us.

The lights were bright on the stage and as many of you know,
that makes it even harder to see people in the audience.

But she was brave.

She was courageous.

SHE
had faith.

Now after a little while, she spotted us and she got
that huge beautiful grin on her face and was waving and singing
even louder than before
but I couldn't help in my heart to gush with pride as I watched baby girl
be so very brave in that frantic moment when she couldn't quite see us.  




It is almost daily that this little girl teaches or reminds me
about God's unconditional, never ending
faithfulness and love for me.

Already, at the age of 4 -
she has such a testimony to share.

God is always there - even when we can't see him.


We are his sweet little babes performing up on this stage of life.
We are all in our awkward, adorable, silly costumes,
and we all have distractions and lights blaring in our eyes
 and we are all frantically searching the audience
for just one glimpse of our Abba Father.

We need just a glimpse
to feel secure.

To feel confident enough to carry on another day.

In the mean time,
He is sitting so proudly but quietly,
just waiting for us to decide
not to focus on everything else and
to see Him.

If we can dodge the distractions and have the faith of a child,
 and never give up our pursuit
to see him - to feel his presence...

He WILL reveal himself to us
and
we will see Him more clearly.


Matthew 18:3 (NIV)
3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.



Distractions come in all shapes, sizes, and sounds.

We just have to be aware of their presence and abilities to fog our vision.

Well - today I'm off to pick up Christmas Cards.
... I can't wait to see how they turned out and
I imagine there will be plenty of distractions for me to ignore.

I can handle it. I'm ready. And as my Mama says,
"My gun is cocked and loaded."

Happy Friday, Dears.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

~ I love your socks! ~

S
o this year I really wanted to
something super creative for
Advent. I looked on blogs,
Pinterest and Google for ideas
and a really fun idea I saw using


socks!

So I gathered up all those silly holiday socks that we don't wear too much,
and I went to the thrift store for the remaining. I gathered together 25 total.

I wrote down from 1 - 25 ideas for family activities, verses and gathered
a few fun candies for here and there...

I have to admit I didn't stuff them from day one
and I definitely should have because I tend to forget... in fact, I should just stuff the rest today
so we can finish up strong.

::sigh::

Raise your hand if your getting a bit overwhelmed...


[waving both hands in the air]

The types of things I stuff my socks with are little messages
that have a family activity which have included:

* Paint Christmas Pictures and hang them in the windows

* Family Game Night

* Decorate the House for Christmas as a family (including all of our bedrooms)
Kitchen Window

(that is not a chalk board fyi - I took poster board, painted it black, and drew on it with white crayon)

Sister's room!

Boys' Room!

I surprised sister one night when she got home from work with her whole bedroom decorated!
She loved it!

I put a touch of greenery in a vase so she can get a daily whiff or two of Christmas!


Her room is very shabby chic so I went with gold and vintage looking apples in there.

She got that giraffe from Africa -- she's spoiled rotten. baaaha!

Me and My Loverboy's bedroom.
 I adore blue and silver - these were all on my Christmas Tree last year actually


* Picnic on the floor for dinner

* Bake Cookies together

that is just a few ideas that we have done and then
every other day or so I add a verse to go along with the Christmas story
and also randomly add in a little candy for the kids.

All the kids take turns opening the socks - they really love it
and I love thinking up the ideas. We don't open them till after nap time because
we wanted to wait for sister to get home from school and all the activities are for the
whole family pretty much so we do them after dinner.

For tonight: We are taking a drive as a family to go see the Christmas Lights.

Wishing you a fabulous day
and
Don't forget to wrap a scarf around
your neck cuz Baby - it's cold outside!


Wednesday, December 14, 2011

~ to the trees!! ~

W
e went as a family to go
pick out our Christmas
tree this year. We went
to our church tree lot, it
was so much fun!

Everyone was all bundles up
with fabulous hats,
scarves,
 puffy coats
and cheerful smiles!
 Oh - and some of us had our
GIDDY
smiles on!! Lol!
 Any tree lot that has a warm cozy camp trailer
with Christmas Lights on it
and blaring Christmas Music
is definitely the right place to go! 

It smelt like Christmas goodness!
 We all walked up and down the little tree-aisles and
picked out our favorites.

The kids were running and dodging through the trees!

I have to admit I was dragging my feet to pick out one because it was
just too much fun just being there together.

I mean -
this is where the memories are made and I knew we were in the middle of a memory...
I was trying to savor it as much as I could...
you know, that precious moment of memorie-making-ness...

We finally got one picked out and I paid the lady
while Daddy loaded it up in the Buick.
 Even our little princess found one for her very own bedroom!
 We got it home and Daddy put it up for us...
the next day we decorated it.
I had little vintage red apples that my mom had given me that we used,
strings of wooden beads,
old straw-like snowflakes that were my first decorations I ever bought,

and I topped it with a pretty cross that my mom had also given me,
and I attached it to a bow that had some berries, greenery and pine cones.


These are the great little snowmen decorations that my Grandma Sally sent to my boys.
And this little nativity ornament was to Ben and I.

I love it!
Our little tree turned out really cute this year...
not quite what I had in mind originally as I had hoped to do something a little different with plaid and handmade little blackboards -
but there is always next year for that.
And I'm oh SO thankful for this sweet little tree chalked full of precious memories of little boys and dogs rearranging things for me.

It's glow at night is perfect.
What more could a girl ask for?

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