What Shoes, Chocolate and “Georgies” Have in Common…

I’ve posted a few times over the year about our German tradition of St. Nicholas Day. This year we incorporated Avelyn giving up her “Georgie” {aka Pacifier}. It’s been 3 days now since she’s had a Georgie: It has not been fun but it hasn’t been as bad as a I thought.

Friday she decided not to nap, yesterday I got her to nap, but I had to sing her to sleep. Last night she was so excited and wound up after Matt’s surprise birthday party {at which she got to see her cousins} it, again, took a while to get to sleep. Tonight it took almost 2 hours to get her to sleep: Books are no longer enough, I have to sing, until she’s asleep, rubbing her head constantly. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to increase my repertoire of songs.

Interestingly enough she hasn’t asked for her Georgie, she even thanked me on Friday for asking her to give up her Georgie, but I know the reason why she is not falling asleep per usual is not having it. It makes it really easy to give it back to her, but since St. Nicholas took them to the north pole, it’s kind of hard to just get them back.

On to St. Nicholas Day…

Ave was very excited to find a new book, a small bar of German Chocolate {in her shoes}, and everyone got matching pajamas!

What’s the fun of waiting until Christmas and only wearing them for a few days. I think they came out super-cute! Now I just have to finish Mommy and Daddy’s PJs for Christmas morning.

The Winner is…

Thank you so much to all of you who entered the giveaway. I had such a fun time doing this, as well as getting to read all of your comments; it was such a blessing!

I hope you had fun too, and found some wonderful new blogs to read. I also hope to see you back around these parts again :-)

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

This past weekend we headed to our favorite Christmas Tree Farm to get our tree {we actually won our tree this year…yay!} I think this has to be the most beautiful tree we’ve ever had. I wanted tall and skinny and that’s just what I got; I didn’t even have to trim any branches off the bottom.

Needless to say, last night I stayed up to get the house decorated; Avie even stayed up late to help decorate the tree. There’s still some things that need to be done, but all in all it was a productive weekend; I even got some Christmas shopping done online as well as ordered our Christmas cards.

So here it is….our home, decorated for our first official Christmas of 6! I definitely have done a bit more than last year.

What are some of your favorite Christmas decorations?

Don’t forget the enter the MASSIVE GIVEAWAY! It ends tonight at midnight, so get those entries in!

A Few More of My Favorite Things: Christmas Books!

I love books, I love Christmas books even more! Over the years I’ve asked what everyone’s favorite Christmas reads were, because I was always at a loss of what to read. This year is different! This year I’m coming to YOU with some suggestions! {I’ll give you a second to be awed of me…you’re welcome}.

Mind you…I don’t have a ton of suggestions and only have those I do because of a flyer I got in the mail for a local Christian book store.

The Bridge by Karen Kingsbury
There is a {e}pre-equel to this on amazon.com called The Beginning

Susanna’s Christmas Wish by Jerry S. Eicher

A Wreath of Snow by Liz Curtis Higgs

 

A Wild Goose Chase Christmas by Jennifer AlLee

The Christmas Pony by Melody Carlson

Have you discovered a new Christmas favorite? I’d love to hear about it.
Don’t forget to enter the Ladder Bloggers Giveaway if you haven’t already…be sure to check out the other blogs too. There are some awesome gifts!

A Few of My Favorite Things

The Sound of Music has long be a family favorite. My grandmother grew up in Germany during WW2, coming to America in the 50s: Her favorite song was Edelweiss. There’s one song from that movie that most of us probably know, My Favorite Things. Only a few songs can instantly cheer me and bring me to tears at the same time….and that is one of them.


In honor of our massive Ladder Blogger giveaway {Be sure to go and check out the more than 20 awesome items that you could win!}, I’ve decided to share a few things that make being a part of a Mastermind Blogging Group one of my favorite things.

• A group of like-minded women who are willing to give me feedback on any number of crazy ideas and questions I may have.
• Always there to answer any prayer requests I may have
• They help to spread the word when I have something I’m excited about on my blog, whether through twitter or facebook
• They make blogging conferences a lot less scary and a lot more fun
• Accountability…being a part of a group helps me to focus on the what and why of blogging
• The new friendships I have formed

Here’s what I have to offer you…if you are interested in being a part of a Mastermind Group, START ONE. Pick 2 or 3 of your readers that you have really connected with, invite them to join you, invite them to invite 1 or 2 people to your group.

My group consists of 20 women, many of which I have had the privilege to meet and spend time with in person as well as online, women that I would NEVER have met if it hadn’t been for one person, asking me to join their little group. We’re set up as a private group on Facebook, where we can share and talk about blogging…that thing that most people in our {REAL} lives do not get!

So, start one. It can be whatever you want it to be. But honestly, don’t go the blogging thing alone, it’s wonderful having other PEOPLE to share it with.

And yes, one of these Christmas, my girls will be dressed in white dresses with blue satin sashes.

What is your favorite thing about blogging?

Love Came Down…

The first few Christmases after we were married were not overly happy ones. Every year we expected to be sharing our Savior’s birth with a little one of our own, and it didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen. Every year I would listen to Amy Grant’s Love Has Come, sobbing the lyrics through tears. You see, we never knew whether we would have the Christmas morning that she sings about.

I struggled with celebrating the birth of a baby, particularly one that was born to an unwed, teenage mother. I rejoiced in the birth of Jesus and all that it meant, but that baby, it sometimes just held too much pain for me.

The other night we had friends of our’s to dinner, friends who just welcomed their first born, a son, into this world. Friends who have been there for us and wept with us during those years, who have sat at our table and prayed with us, worshiped with us.

I ladled out homemade stew from my new DaySpring soup tureen, while looking around our table at all the faces gathered there, in love, in HIS love: I looked at the faces of not only our friends and their son, but of my husband and our FOUR children.

What a blessing! That this house, which we thought may never be filled with children of our own, is not only full, but brimming with them, with dear friends, with God, with LOVE.

Love came down and filled our hearts {and stomachs} and home with Jesus.

I’d love for you to visit the blogs of my friends, who are also sharing their DaySpring stories, as well as others who are linking up with DaySpring’s November (in)deals.

*I received the above soup tureen from DaySpring.com for free in return for sharing my story and how I was blessed by DaySpring’s products. By the way, the soup tureen is absolutely beautiful, as are the soup bowls…it was plenty big enough for the 5 of us to serve ourselves from during our supper together. It’s definitely one of my new favorite pieces.

Christmas Book Advent Countdown

Between Pinterest and other bloggers, I think this is The Thing to do this year. I didn't think I had many Christmas books from which to choose, but then I started pulling them all together, oh my. Without even trying I have 18 Christmas/Winter books, and I know of at least 2 or 3 that are missing.

Some of the books are ones I had growing up, others are ones we've bought over the years, and others are ones I've gotten for Ave; however, I have not managed to wrap any of them to do the whole unwrapping thing with Avelyn.

Here's what we've got, in no particular order:

1) The Animals' Christmas Eve

2) One Snowy Night

3) One Baby Jesus

4) The Wee Christmas Cottage of Carn-na-Ween

5) The Story of Christmas

6) God Gave us Christmas

7) Winter's Gift

8) The Polar Express

9) A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote

10) How the Grinch Stole Christmas

11) The Night Before Christmas (A Cut Paper Edition)

12) The Christmas Candle

13) Mortimer's Christmas Manger

14) The Gift of the Magi

15) Little Red's Christmas Story

16) The Mitten by Jan Brett

17) The Hat by Jan Brett

18) Silent Night

These aren't all the books, just the ones that I had sitting in the living room.

I do have a few more sitting in my Amazon shopping cart, I'm waiting to place an order Christmas gifts:

Bear Stays up for Christmas

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathon Toomey

Room for a Little One

.....and a few others.

{I do have one recommendation: If you have a Christmas Tree Shop near you, hit them up! They have a great selection of Children's Christmas books this time of year, and they're usually only a few dollars each. It's a great way to build your collection.}

I love books, and have enough of an issue with having too many of them, but I have a certain soft spot for Christmas books....I'm not even sure why. There are even a couple of books that are my books to read at Christmas time, but that's another post for another day :-)

If you're doing this, or love Christmas books, what are some of your favorites?

Christmas, Christmas Time is Here...

I've definitely "simplified" my Christmas decor this year. In past years I have my entire Victorian village assembled, knick-knacks everywhere, and lots of other things. This year, we have our tree, our nativity, the stockings, my ceramic Christmas tree, and a few of my snowmen and other things. We did do our outside lights (Matt and I worked on them yesterday). It still looks like Christmas, but I definitely do miss a few of my decorations.

Our Christmas tree from the tree farm we always visit; My Nativity wall hanging; Our traditional ceramic Christmas tree (my Oma and Mom always had one of these).

My Fontanini Nativity, which was a wedding present from several friends...I love this Nativity, but I do need to get a few shepherds to take care of those animals! Someday I would love to have the Willow Tree Nativity, you know when I have a place that kids won't be able to climb to :-P And, last, but not least, Ave's Nativity, which she plays with constantly.

Our stockings are up (and no I never did finish the quilted ones that I started a while ago...maybe next year), as well as our Advent wreath. Fortunately everything that's out shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to put away (with the exception of the tree), which will be really nice when Christmas is over and my hands are full of babies etc.

How do you decorate your home? What are the traditions that you have to continue?

Happy St. Nikolaus Day!

We had a special visitor last night: St. Nikolaus! For those non-German people it's the day celebrating the original Santa Claus (yes, he was a real person). On the night of the 5th children put their shoes out to be filled with treats and small gifts by St Nikolaus.

Ave really got into this morning. I told her when I got her out of the crib that St. Nikolaus was here last night and she immediately ran down the stairs, saw the presents and started tearing them open, before I could even grab the camera!

We only got her one thing, The One Year Devotional for Pre-Schoolers: It looks like a really great little book! The devotions are short and to the point, with each day being relevant to the time of year and anything else going on. I figure we'll start on January 1, because, for some reason, I have issues with starting those kind of things in the middle or end.

She also got a couple of books and a CD from my parents for St. Nikolaus Day. Matt and I got a book called, "Growing Grateful Kids", which has been on my Amazon list since I heard a radio interview with the author, some Christmas dish towels, a candle, and Guideposts The Joys of Christmas. (Yes, my mom still gives us each gifts for St. Nikolaus Day :-P)

To all of you, I wish a Happy St. Nikolaus Day!

Simplify the Season

There have been a couple of great blog posts going around {here, here, and here} about simplifying Christmas and the hustle and bustle that we all seem to get drowned in while creating all that Christmas cheer.

For obvious reasons I'm having to follow a rather low-key agenda for this holiday season: No crazy baking sessions, no climbing along the roof to hang the lights, and no trying to run all around accomplishing all the memory making. This year will be entirely different for me.

I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of sad about not getting all Christmas-crazy, but part of me is really looking forward to having less going on and more time to actually revel in the Christmas spirit and the meaning of Christmas.

For a while I've always wondered what it would be like to be pregnant at Christmas, to sit in church on Christmas Eve, in the silent and candle-lit sanctuary, singing "Silent Night"; feeling much as Mary must've that night long ago, at least physically. Who knows if I'll get to experience that this year or not. I'm praying that for Christmas we will all be home together (babies still tucked safely inside).

Of course, despite "simplifying" I have done some of our Christmas traditions, which I will be attempting to post about in the next few days.

WIR! (Weekend in Review)

~*~Thanksgiving - Thursday, November 24th~*~

We did our usual two household turkey feast. Every year we warn everyone that we're not doing this next year, but we still, somehow, end up doing Thanksgiving dinner twice at both our parents' homes. Fortunately, we kind of do dinner at my parents, then "light" dinner and dessert at Matt's: Kind of spread it around a bit. Although there were 6 pies just at my In-Law's, for 12 people!

There were quite a few things I was VERY thankful for this Thanksgiving: 1) that I was home eating Thanksgiving with family, rather than in the hospital, 2) that my sister was with us, and in such a better place than she was last year (I can't tell you how huge a blessing it is to have her back, even she's thankful she didn't go through with the past year's drama, and is home with family).

Click HERE for more pictures from Thanksgiving.

~*~Friday, November 25th~*~
Very exciting day! It was our 6 year anniversary. I spent the day lounging on the twin bed in the babies' room, while Matt assembled the dresser and 3 cribs. In the afternoon we went up to my parents for dinner and were promptly thrown out at 4pm, because my sister had people coming over to help her with things for my "surprise" shower on Saturday.

We went home, did some things, then my mom called us around 6:00 and invited us back up for dessert and to get Ave. Very suspicious.

~*~Saturday, November 26th~*~
Surprise shower day! Another suspicious thing: Both of our families had people visiting, and usually everyone is calling me to see when we're coming up with Ave....no one called me all day. I actually got really upset about that, because everyone knew I knew and I really felt left out. I can't remember, but I may have had a good cry about it.

Yes, it was supposed to be a surprise: I was adamant about not wanting a shower and my mom kept asking for lists of things we needed etc and she and Matt's mom slipped a couple of times (they were trying to pull all this off while MIL has been in Syracuse with Matt's grandmother in the hospital).

Needless to say it was a very nice shower, which resulted in a boat load of preemie and newborn boys clothes (more than we need). I also got my reclining/rocker which I've wanted for the room. Fortunately, since my biggest thing with not wanting a shower was people going crazy, no one was insane with their gift giving, but all were very generous.

Click HERE for more pictures from the shower

~*~Sunday, November 27th~*~

Yay! The first day of Advent! In the morning we got up and had breakfast, did a few things around the house, then headed to our favorite tree farm to cut our tree! We got a Douglas Fir this year....as of right now it's up, but there are no lights on it (11/29).

Click HERE for more pictures from getting our tree.

In the afternoon Matt worked some more on things in the babies' room. {On a side note} Our friend R, came over, to help, with sad news: His wife, who was 10.5 weeks pregnant was miscarrying the baby (she went yesterday and they confirmed it had stopped growing at 7.5 weeks). We're beyond heartbroken for them. She was very upset, but had known for a few days that something wasn't right, and wasn't surprised at the news. So I just ask that you keep them in prayer.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
It's been beyond crazy busy around here...and I'm really hoping for some good down time this week, because I am getting really tired.

Operation Christmas Child

The other day Ave and I took our shoe boxes to church for Operation Christmas Child. This year we did 4 boxes again (2 girls/2boys). Ave did help with picking some of the stuff for the girls' boxes, and she didn't put up too much of a fight when I told her we were giving the things to someone who didn't have anything (there was a fight, but not much).

This year our church did 47 boxes (if I counted correctly in the picture): Yay! We did something different and paid the shipping on our boxes online, so that we can find out where in the world the boxes end up. Once they've arrived we'll get an email telling where the boxes went. I can't wait to find that out!

We're hoping as the kids grow up, having that element will make it that much more fun and real to them. Heck, I'm excited! We also included a small card with a note for the child, with our names, and a picture.

Unfortunately, there is no cute picture of Ave and the boxes this year. I was not up to carrying 5 shoe boxes and corralling Miss A in the church.....next year we'll get a picture: Each one of the kids with their box :-P

I do wish there was a way to see the child getting your box, or opening it, but I guess that's part of trusting in God. We don't know if we included things they needed or not, but we just trust and pray that wherever God sends the boxes that the child who receives it is blessed by it's contents.

GIVEAWAY! Free Shutterfly.com Photo Cards!

Last year shutterfly.com gave away 50 free flat holiday cards to those who blogged about their favorite designs...so I am certainly taking advantage of that! I was so pleased with the photo cards we got last year for Christmas: They arrived so quickly and they looked great...several people commented on our Christmas cards.

Not knowing who will be here for Christmas cards makes it a bit hard to decide on a style, but these were the ones I loved! I figure if the trio is here before I mail out Christmas cards, we'll have their pictures on their too...and if not then there are some great layouts to put some fun pictures of Miss A on them.

These are the ones I loved for this year. Sometimes it is so hard to find traditional styled Christmas cards and Shutterfly delivers! They have almost 30 more traditional looking Christmas photo cards, and of course more of the funky, modern stylings too!

Shutterfly also has some great Thank You card designs to send out after the holidays for all those lovely gifts received, or to just build your stash. I know mine is getting depleted and I'll need to stock up on them soon!

HERE'S THE GIVEAWAY!

Not only is shutterfly giving me 50 free photo cards, but they've also given me 3 free promo codes for 25 photo cards each, to share with whomever. Leave me a comment below and on October 25th (2 months 'til Christmas!) I'll randomly choose 3 bloggers to share the codes with! Just make sure you leave a way for me to contact you :-)

One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly. ~Andy Rooney

We're still attempting to clean up the messes of Christmas. It was a good Christmas.

Christmas Eve we had at our house...which I think is becoming a tradition since no one will let me do dinner for EVERYONE on Christmas day. It's never anything over the top we just have a variety of appetizers and cold cuts, but there's always a ton of food (no one in my family knows how to do a small meal).

After dinner Santa came for a quick visit to see Ave and her cousin, C....neither of them thought too highly of him, but A was ok with it, C was kind of like "ughhh....". It was cute though to see them both reacting to his arrival. After dinner we headed to church for Christmas Eve service.

Once we got home, A went to bed, and we cleaned up a bit and headed northward (how we always refer to going to bed) for the night.

Christmas Day was the usual running around...but it was so much more exciting this year with A. She was somewhat into opening presents and playing with her toys. I somehow managed to stick to the 3 gift policy we've instated: She got an LLBean sled, a toolbox, and a book...plus a few little things in her stocking (magnets for the fridge, bath stuff, and an ornament). I got an iPod for christmas and Matt got some tools.

After we were done we headed to the ILs' to do presents with them and have breakfast. The girls were so, so funny to watch. Neither of them really knew what to make of the presents and kept getting distracted every time they saw something new.

We headed back home in the hopes that A would take a nap: BAH! Didn't happen...and she was miserable! We headed up to my parents and she fell asleep in the car, so we left her in there with the car backed up to a window, so we could keep an eye on her. After we ate (again) there we opened presents.

Then it was back to the ILs for another Christmas dinner (I think we have food issues in this family) and did presents with Matt's grandparents.

It was a great day, but I think we're still recovering from all of it...I know A is...her schedule is entirely thrown out of whack! Now we can, hopefully, get back to some sort of regular schedule.

Merry Christmas to All!

From our home to your's
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Luke 2:14

Covert Christmas

Have you noticed that people are afraid to say "Christmas"? I have. They do their holiday shopping, wish people a "Happy Holiday", ask if you're ready for the holidays, send out holiday cards, and listen to holiday music.

Yesterday at the doctors' the nurses would ask if I was ready for the weekend (which I understand they're being respectful). I have to go back up on Christmas Eve and the nurse was explaining (in a rather apologetic voice) that Christmas is one of their holidays, so I get the luck of the draw for an appointment...completely OK. I told her I would see her then and she said she was be off...that she'd rather work New Years (still never saying a thing about Christmas).

I'm an instigator: At that point I said, "Yea, I'd rather have Christmas Eve off instead of New Year's so I can go to church". With that, it was like a weight lifted from her...."me too" she said in a lowered voice, "We go to Midnight Mass and don't get home until 2am". We wished each other a Merry Christmas and went on our way.

I instigate at stores too...I always tell people "Merry Christmas". I said it to one lady at the grocery store and she looked at me with shock, gave me a big smile, and said "You have a Merry Christmas too".

There was a quote I heard yesterday on Family Life Network, and I wish I could remember the exact wording, it was something like this: "I will respect your religion, but not to the disrespect of my own". The general jist of it was that we're so worried about offending people with our our views that we very often deny our own religion to be politically correct.

I'm a Christian. I'm not going to stop being a Christian because it offends someone. So much of our society has become utterly ridiculous with the neutralization of religion and the removing of Christianity from society. Our Declaration of Independence says "Freedom OF Religion", not "Freedom FROM Religion". We are a nation founded in Christianity: Like it or not. Out of the 308 million people in this country, 228 million identify themselves as Christians.

What's interesting to me is how we, as Christians, are to accept all religions, but never to mention our own. There has been a war against Christianity going on in this country...what's interesting is that no other religious group is as readily persecuted for speaking their beliefs as Christians are.

The stores display menorahs and dreidels as part of the Holiday decorations, but you never see a Cross or a manger. It confuses me that it's OK to display the religious symbols of Judaism but not Christianity (let me just say that I am in no way condemning, picking on, or calling out Jews or Judaism).

I recently read a little book, two of them actually: The Case for Christmas by Lee Strobel and The Judge who Stole Christmas by Randy Singer. They were both very interesting.

The Case for Christmas was basically a factual investigation of Christmas and the birth of Jesus, as well as the origins of Christmas, and how it was the Roman Church in 300 or 400 AD who decided that Christmas would be celebrated on December 25, as was common to turn a pagan day into a Christian day. There was a whole lot more in that little book that was really just fascinating.

The Judge who Stole Christmas was a fictional book about a man who flat out refuses to stop being a part of a Creche in the town square (a public forum). There was a lot of court cases mentioned in the book (which I haven't had time to sit down and investigate) about the display of Christian symbols. There was also a lot of information about Christmas, and how throughout time it has been treated: The Puritans had actually banned it for many years because of the debauchery that was desecrating what should have been a holy time.

I've gone off on a whole bunch of other things here. ANYWAYS, I just am finding it really interesting that people are afraid to celebrate Christmas, or in any way shape of form refer to Christmas. Christians (and the majority of the people in this country) celebrate Christmas (albeit with some difference of meaning to each group)....we've become the silent majority. Some how Christmas has just been entirely removed and there is just Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Holiday. Food for thought.

Phew!

What a weekend! It's been one whirlwind after another!

Friday night we went to a local college's culinary program's Holiday Panarda, which was a 9 course Italian meal. It was really good, but stupid me forgot to take a camera, then borrowed my MIL's and forgot to take pictures of the food!

We had 12 people there: Matt and I, my parents, my grandfather, my aunt and uncle, Matt's parents, grandparents and his sister. It was a birthday celebration for Matt (12/8) and my grandfather (12/6 - 91 years old).

It was a lot of fun! My grandfather has never experience true culinary dining and was blown away by the food, the presentation, and the portions: He had a blast! SIL and I sat next to each other and we just had our own commentary going (she went to JWU for culinary and worked in the industry at some pretty swanky places before her seafood allergies...so she knows her stuff).

I guess she's been seeing some guy and has gone out on a few dates with him. It sounds like he's a decent guy so hopefully this is something good: SIL is really such a sweet, loving person and she deserves to be happy....especially after the losers she's been with.

Our friends, R & R, watched A on Friday night and she was a complete gem for them. They loved spending time with her. Since they've moved out of town they don't get to see her too much. Plus, R (the wife) has major, major baby fever, but knows that she has to finish school and work for a couple of years still, so she really enjoyed her baby fix.

On Saturday Matt worked on splitting wood, while I did stuff in the house. In the afternoon we went over to the store, because Santa was visiting. But, "Santa" (my dad) slipped walking out of the fridge and smashed his head into the door and gave himself a concussion....he's ok now. We had to find a different Santa at the last minute: Matt was not really into doing that, but I talked one of our employees into it (he's never done it before) and he did a great job. Otherwise it would've been me in a Santa costume....which I would have loved to do. I think we'll have to have Santa revisit on Christmas Eve.
In the evening we went out to one of our dinner-dances and took R & R as our guests to thank for watching A (SIL came down and stayed with A). It was fun: The food was delicious (as always) but the band was horrible....they had no idea what ballroom dance music was and kept playing things that you would here at a low budget wedding. We left around 10 or so and came home. Best part: Ave slept through the night! I think that she thought that her Auntie Meggers was here (she never wakes up at night for SIL or MIL).




Today was supposed to be caroling, but a mix of the weather and other last minute things going on ended up with no one being able to come. Matt and SIL spent about 4 hours splitting and stacking wood, while I finished decorating the house and the cooking that I had started for our caroling party. My parents and MIL came down and had dinner, then we watched Christmas Eve with the MacDonald's (Dr. James MacDonald from Family Life Networks "Walk in the Word").

After our parents left we gave A her bath and up she went, and down I went to remake my fudge. I did it yesterday and it came out like a rock....I crumbled it all up and am going to bake some cookies with it as the chocolate chunks.

Tomorrow is Monday: It was a great weekend, but I'm looking forward to a little down time :-)