Traditions

Our holiday traditions are putting up the tree together, setting out our handmade nativity set, and in more recent years has been reading the Jotham's Journey series. We started with Jotham, read Bartholomew the second year, and now are starting Tabitha. These books weave a fictual character through Israel at the time of Christ's birth.

One tradition of Christmas pasts was to make 'reindeer' aprons with the children. Kim, Josh, and Joe each let me trace their hands and feet, then paint them brown to form the reindeer head. They would wear these aprons as we made sugar cookies and when we set up the tree.

The little girls were so excited to find these aprons in the Christmas box. They wondered who they belonged to. I said a special 6 year old, 4 year old, and 2 year old made them...They just can't imagine that their 'big' siblings were ever that size! Now they would like to make some for themselves...

((Remember these??))

Another tradition we've had for the last 5 years was 'Dirty Santa'...I mean real Dirty, trash pile Santa Exchange. We would gather our trash up, wrap it, and gift our dear friends the Elliott Family with it. Thankfully they didn't mind and were wrapping their trash up for us. We each brought our unmarked, wrapped gifts(a rusty old boat, wild pregnant cats, broken computer monitors, and even a few indescribably weird things). Next, we would draw numbers, choose gifts, then steal the 'best' ones for ourselves. All this in the name of Christmas(!)

This year we have decided the game needed new rules AND a new name, thus the Nutcracker Exchange was born. A much more dignified name, don't you think?? We will be exchanging food items, junk food, homemade food, yucky food, and delicious food! It should be a lot of FUN! The best part for us moms?? When Christmas is over, there won't be stuff to store. We'll enjoy eating all the presents, unless it's yucky, I guess.

The girls and I enjoyed another new 'tradition' this year. Our Keepers of the Faith group made pillowcases for the residents of the Sterling House. Each young girl ages 5-15 made one to share. We went and sang 4 songs, starting with "Jesus Loves Me" and ending with "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". Each girl went around visiting with the residents and giving them their gifts. Our girls were even asked to sing again...Miss K, Miss M, Miss A, and I gave an impromptu concert with "Higher Ground". The residents just cried and hugged the girls, saying this was the best program they had ever had.

Our family has a few more fun upcoming Christmas events, then after settling down for a long winters nap, we'll start looking toward 2012...

May your Christmas Season be Jolly and may you remember the true meaning of Christmas. A babe in a manger who died for you, a lowly sinner. We are blessed!

Resourcefulness- just an introspection...

This is not one of those post on what is going on with our family or what we've done lately. This is one of those 'just because' I got inspired kind of posts.

Resourcefulness has a nice definition from Character First: Finding practical uses for that which others would overlook or discard. My definition: Being too cheap to waste anything.

Just this week I was making no-bake cookies and used all the oatmeal up. The empty bag was a thick waxy paper...which with the use of some scissors quickly became a huge sheet of wax paper. I LOVE saving a dime or dollar using what I already have. I seriously should have been born in the depression era with my saving tendency. I so enjoy it when groceries are a few cents a piece, hence my great excitement for couponing.

I also love the feeling of remaking something to be useful. Just this week my dear friend Steph and I remade skirts to outfit her kiddos by following Tamy's instruction. On that note, Tamy is one smart lady ((thank you friend for all you teach me!)) She is a very resourceful person using up what she has on hand all the time. She's shown me how to make gifts using scrap fabric, so we are using up our fabric to make pillowcases to take to the 'old-erly people', as my Miss M calls them, for Christmas. (Each year our Keepers group blesses the nursing home residents with pillowcases). My obsession with being resourceful includes using fabric passed on from others ((thanks once again Cheryl!)) for this worthy project.

I'm trying now to think what I can do for Christmas while being thrifty...last year I gave my girls a basket of groceries (even though my dear friends laughed at me saving trash!) I saved various boxes and containers, taped them shut, and we've played grocery store all year with this free gift.

I've spent sometime this week patching clothes up for another friend too. Trying to help her be resourceful. It's been awhile since I had hand patched denim jeans. My little guys used to wear their pants patched, but not now...

I save all my printer paper and print my coupons and junk on the back of the used sheets. Surely this saves on our paper bill.

The opposite definition of resourcefulness is wastefulness...which I never want to be guilty of. It is important to be a good steward of all God has provided our family. However being a good steward also means passing some things on. I can NOT horde every item that comes through my door any longer. I am letting things go...even things I might use again. I'm ok that I shared my newborn baby girl clothes with a young single mom or my maternity clothes with a friend. When I need them the Lord will provide more of what I need, that I am confident of.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite little poems:

Use it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do,
or do without!

Another October....

October was a busy month with no time to blog...not that November is much better I'm just up early today with a few spare moments to catch up.

We had three big things happen in Oct and a lot more little ones that escape me.

~~Family Camp 2011!!~~

We went on a week long camping trip with the Elliott and Chatham families to Big Sandy. We were very blessed to have Abbie and Charity join us. With all the trip craziness, we're just glad they are still our friends afterwards! We ate TONS of powdered doughnuts, learned to like iced coffee, had a great time at volleyball and rapelling, rock climbing and relaxing...you can figure out who did what!?!

We had sickness and sunburns, saw a few bike wrecks, lost more things than I care to remember, then found a few in the strangest places. Over all we were very blessed to have a week of FAMILY AND FRIENDS~~

~~ Fall Break~~ We took the opportunity of Josh being out of school to have his wisdom teeth removed...ouch! He's recovering nicely now. I forgot to take any pictures of his chipmunk cheeks, however a nice mom wouldn't post those anyway.

~~Birthday Fun~~Then the last week of October I celebrated my 37th birthday. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly time does go by. Somewhere between being a 'young' mom and today I must have blinked...and now I have grown children! Although I never planned to be young forever, I didn't plan on it going this fast either.

I am so incredibly blessed by each of my children and a husband who is wonderful! I praise God daily for them...