The Wonder of it All

Ahh Christmas Eve.  The wonder of it all.  I am feeling quite emotional today thinking of the day before Jesus came to earth all those years ago.  As we are doing last minute preparations for our celebrations, tidying up, prepping food, wrapping the last of the presents, I ponder what last minute preparations were going on in heaven that first "Christmas Eve"  Were the angels having a last practice before their concert, were God and Jesus making last minute plans, was the Holy Spirit busy preparing the hearts of men to receive the Savior?  I hope that today I can rest in this peace and savour every moment of the next few days.  Tonight we have our Christmas Eve candle light service and I know I'll cry as we sing those familiar carols, but as we do, we need to really listen to the words and absorb them... JOY to the world, the LORD has come... Oh HOLY night... Come let us ADORE Him...

My silly girls posing...

Just some Christmas holiday fun game times with my 2 fav card players! 

Chocolate Pretzels

We made our Chocolate Covered Pretzels yesterday.  I had to save some activities to do while the kids were home from school (BTW, I won't be home schooling any time soon!)  I've really enjoyed our holiday time so far but keeping them busy has been a bit of a challenge.  Notice the teacher in me had them spell their names with pretzels!   Ha, I'll throw in a little educational fun any time!  Oh and just a note to anyone who wants to make chocolate pretzels, don't mix the chocolate with condensed milk... it turns into fudge and does not coat nicely, don't ask how I know, just take my word on this one!

Coco didn't help but she did get into them after and make quite a mess, I just threw this picture in because she is so cute!

Next Off the List

We did our gingerbread house today.  Lots of fun, too much sugar consumption  and an almost 2 year old doesn't get the idea that these candies and treats are not all for eating. There were a few stressful moments.  My plan to be unstressed and calm this holiday was tossed when the crazy house wouldn't stay standing...  I think the icing in the kit was a little too runny (maybe I should go back to homemade, I still have the creme of tartar, does it go bad?)  The windows kind of look like a haunted house and some of the candies were sliding down.  Notice on the first picture all the "helps" our little house needed to stay up, this pic was taken after it had completely fallen down once.  (I think I thought some bad words, but I don't think I said them out loud)  Brady was trying to be helpful, but at that moment I didn't want his help, I decided to "let" him play outside (in -35) for a few minutes.  So I rigged up the "helps"  and let it set while we went out for our annual Christmas Light Ride. I think the finished product turned pretty good!  Now our ride was much calmer and even relaxing.  Christmas music playing on the radio, a nice warm car and 3 kids strapped in tight.  We saw Candy Cane Lane, Polar Bear Place, and Reindeer Run Drive.  Wow 2 things off the list in one night!

Off the List

We're crossing things off the list!  This is one of the cutest Christmas books ever, and it's sentimental for me because my dad used to read it to us at Christmas time.  I read it to the kids, Jayme and Brady liked it a lot, Nicoley didn't listen too well so she mostly enjoyed daddy time while I read.  On Saturday night we watched the movie, the one I didn't know they had even made and it was cute.  Kind of a seventies version, but I guess the book was written in the seventies so it worked.  The Herdmans were way cuter than they should have been and the movie left out a few parts but it was a good family night, complete with snacks, cuddles and giggles.  We "discussed" the movie after and I think that Jayme understood the point of the story.  All in all a good read, an okay movie and a fun family tradition.

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We are getting SO excited for Christmas and I've taken a bit of a different focus this holiday season.  Normally I'm pretty flustered and a bit worked up about all that needs to get done and I think back in January and regret not enjoying more.  So this year I'm CALM and RELAXED.  I want to enjoy every moment of this time of year with the kids and I want to make lasting memories with them.  I want for them to start to understand the true meaning of Christmas.  (This posted under a picture of Santa! Ha!)  We received a cute Advent devotional this year and I've made a list of activities that we want to do during the season and I find it helps to tell the kids what's on that list and they make sure we do all the things.  Our list includes: reading the book "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" , then watching the movie (I've never seen it, didn't even know they had one, saw it at the library and I really hope it doesn't suck!) , making a gingerbread house (OK so I bought a kit... I'm not going to go through that again... a few years ago I decided to get Mark involved and I cut out and baked pieces to a very cute gingerbread semi, well, Mark was displeased with how out of proportion it was, so the next year he cut out the gingerbread for a to-scale semi, which he only wanted decorated with smarties that were the actual colour and placement of the lights, not so much fun for kids who want candies and icing EVERYwhere!  so we stick with a house and I buy an all inclusive kit).  We have baking on the list and we've done all that: fudge, gingerbread men, sugar cookies, peanut butter bark, and rice crispie treats.  We still need to cover pretzels in chocolate to complete our holiday treats!  We will have a jammies night in the car driving around to look at Christmas lights (Mark will have to wear clothes because as Uncle Kenny knows only too well... what Markie wears to bed won't keep him very warm in the car!)  All these activites, plus the Church events, family events and fun times with friends make this "the most wonderful time of the year."

I really hope to make this a special Christmas, I pray that my sweet little ones will start to get the true spirit of Christmas, and that they will understand that the reason we give and receive gifts is because Jesus was the best gift of all.

Brady's Prayer

Tonight was Brady's turn to pray, he is always so thoughtful in his prayers and it seriously melts my heart.  Among other things, he prayed for Peace in Israel, this is how it went:

"I pray for the peace of Israel, cuz they're in a bad war.  I pray that there'll be no more killness, no more hurtness, no more hospitals, not more deadness and no more funerals"

So precious.