A Blessed Merry Christmas

A Blessed Merry Christmas to all. The Advent candles have all been lite and the white pure Jesus candle burns bright for today is Christs birthday.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Several plates of goodies have been given out to neighbors and friends!

Gifts are all wrapped, some sent off to family and many still in place patiently waiting for our family gathering next weekend and over New Years. It will be a great time of Celebration.

The twelve days of Christmas have begone. We received some beautiful Christmas snow during the night so we had our first white Christmas in quite a few years. The Christmas Eve 5:30 PM children's program was great and the 7:30 PM candlelight service was filled with music and the wonderful message of Christs birth. Christmas day Communion service was a special one with our choir singing 3 songs and of course the gift of His body and blood for forgiveness.

Hey, whats this? Puzzle pieces. That's right, about 1 week ago we set up a small table and commenced to set together this huge Christmas puzzle.

Time sure gets away from us when we are searching for just the right puzzle piece. We couldn't believe it was midnight last evening when we finally noticed the time. My husband is much better at this project then I am, he finds 20 pieces to every 1 of mine. You can see the picture is starting to unfold. Below you can see the puzzle box and how gorgeous this will be once we get it completed. I will keep you posted on our progress!

Story Book Island

Last evening My Cousin and I went to view all the lights at Story Book Island. This is a free fun place for children and adults in summer. It has many theme displays such as Cinderella, Wizard of Oz, Jack and Jill, Billy Goat Gruff, 101 Dalmatians, Snow white, etc. . .

In November different organizations (you can see the sign toward the right of top picture) or families adopt a display and decorate it with thousands of lights. This year there were several Nativities and blow up snow men, Santa's and merry-go-rounds. Even a blow up Winnie the poo, Tigger, piglet, Kanga and Eeyore.

Below is a picture to show all the lights. It was very cold and way harder to take a nice picture then one would think. I tried with my flash off and then with my flash on. At least you can get an idea of how very beautiful this park is during the Christmas season.

It takes approximately 1/2 hour to walk around the park if you look at everything. In summer, with energetic excited children along, it can take a lot longer with all the play areas, slides, tunnels, maize and swings. A lot of those areas are roped off during the Christmas season.
This park is only open from 5:30 PM until 9:30 pm on weekends from Thanksgiving until New Years. There is also beautiful Christmas music and sometimes old fashioned carolers walking and singing on the lighted paths.

For some of you who have been there, this is a familiar display. Yogi and Boo Boo. This was always our favorite spot to take pictures of our children when they were young, in the picnic basket.

This is a wale and we always called it Jonah and the big fish. In summer children can go in that big fish. You can see the main building, entrance and exit with a nice gift shop.

Most of the lights are white and I really like the look. There is a train that runs both seasons giving children 10 yr old and under rides around the park. I didn't get a picture of the train.

Below is a site I would like to share with everyone.

This is really sweet, I hope you can get on this site to watch the first Christmas gift. I received it in a Email from one of my good friends. You might need to copy this address and paste on your Internet Explorer!

Merry Christmas everyone, Enjoy!

http://www.andiesisle.com/thefirstchristmasgift.hs.html

Special Weekend

Saturday evening we enjoyed having our group of friends over for our annual Christmas party. We have had a Christmas party for many years. Each year I think of a theme and the party gift exchange is quite interesting. This year the theme was "Let your light so shine" So all the gifts were shiny or had a light. Each guest was given a Bible verse to read that had the word Light or shine in it. The # of the Bible verse determined who had first, then second choice of the gift and on and on until all gifts had been opened. There are normally a few gifts that get passed from one to another until they are safe after the 3 time.

Last year our party theme was "wings" This is the traveling gift and has been passed around for the last several years for birthdays, or Christmas. It changes appearance to fit the occasion. This took a lot of work to change a beautiful white Angel into this plane.

My youngest daughter had the pleasure of getting "IT" last year and if you look below you can see it was changed and had a glow stick inside with words of Light written on it.

This year it went home with it's original owner and I know it will be something very special next year when the theme is "The Sound of Music"

We are always pleased and excited to see this old gift make it's appearance.

Below is our group of 5 couples - one. He had the opportunity to go Goose hunting but we will look forward to his being with us next year at our Sound of Music Christmas party.

Sunday was our Christmas service at Porcupine mission church.

This is one of our regular girls helping tell the Christmas story with flannel graph.

During the reading of Luke 2, some of the children brought up wood painted figures of the Nativity. This really brought the Bible reading to life and was special for them.

The younger children were in the living nativity with head dresses on. They were up front for the singing of the 3 verses of Away in a Manger. This will be a memorable time for each and hopefully help them to remember why we celebrate Christmas.

We pray that this will always be a special experience for these children. It has been 4 years since we have dressed up for a pageant. Just using head dresses made it a lot faster and easier.

This is us four ladies who help with the mission. We wore look alike t-shirts with the nativity on. I thought this deserved a picture. The food is mostly prepared by the lady on the right. Now that's a lot of work! We also had some hats and gloves to give out and a food bag for each adult.

SNOW/CHRISTMAS

Saturday Dec 8th was a snowy cold day. This was great and just what I needed to get in the spirit of Christmas and get all my decorating done. It was a great day to stay indoors and watch the white big flakes of snow cover the earth.

This is a picture taken from our back door. You can see we had about 6" of the fluffy snow and it seemed as if each flake stayed just where it landed.

With the cold, 15 degree day, with no sign of wind, you can see from this picture of our bench swing how the snow piled up at each rung and the 6 to 7 inches on the arm.

This is our wood rocker with just as much snow. The trees and fields were absolutely beautiful with the white cloud like snow cover.

I truly believe that the colder it is, the more the snow sparkles. I tried to capture the sparkly snow flakes with this close-up picture. You can see a few at the bottom right of the picture. If you want to see them very close up, put your cursor on this picture and click, it will enlarge.

Just to prove to you that I actually did get our tree up and decorated I took a few pictures.

It always looks better in person then on a picture.

I really love our artificial pre-lite tree. It is about the right size for our family room and with the heat from our wood stove, I don't have to worry about it drying out or take it down if we decide to go out of town for a few days over Christmas.

About 8 years ago, when I was still employed with Spiegel catalog, I purchased 3 lovely 6" angels from a great after Christmas sale. I have treasured those tree angels and love to decorate with them. Some time they hang from my ceiling, but this year they are all three in our Christmas tree. One is red as you see here, one blue and the other is green. On this picture you can also see part of some of the family name Christmas balls made by my oldest daughter. I received them as a Christmas gift. There are 11 of them, one for each family member. This is the second year I have had them on the tree. What a joy it is to hang all 11 ornaments with fond memories and say a special prayer for each family member. It is fun to look at the Christmas tree and see how each ornament can remind us of that first Christmas when Baby Jesus was born for all people.

Half Way

A few months ago my husband suggested that instead of reading various parts from the Bible, that I should start at the beginning, Genesis, and just read through the Bible. I have never done that before and I do need to confess that I am not a reader. Today I finally reached the center of the Bible. YEA! Half ways through the Bible. Psalm 119 is not only the center of the Bible but also the longest chapter with 176 verses.

Psalm 119 has 176 verses praising and thanking God for His Laws. No one can keep all the laws, that's why we are thankful for Gods Gracious forgiveness through Jesus. The law doesn't ruin all our fun but helps to keep order, leads to happiness and well being for the family and community.

I am certainly enjoying reading through the Bible this way and have learned a lot and things seem to fit together mush better now. I just wish I could remember more of what I read and exactly where I read it! I would like to invite each of you to start reading through the Bible, the True Word of God! If I can do it, so can you! If you have already read through the Bible, Great, read it again!

The Feast!

Just look at this Delicious, seasoned, roasted Turkey and the golden tasty dressing! You can almost smell and taste it, right? The Lutheran Hen sure put on a great Thanksgiving feast.

Here is the Rooster doing a little Turkey carving. He is so big, it makes the Turkey look small but it was plenty for all plus leftovers for supper and of course turkey and gravy over biscuits for another day.

Hear are the scrumptious home made rolls that were baked by the Hen. When these were baking and then pulled fresh from the hot oven, the smell filled the house! I can't help but think back to the pioneer days and how that same great smell excited many people in anticipation of the fresh baked rolls.

Isn't this a gorgeous dish? It tasted as good as it looked. Fresh asparagus, garlic cloves and fresh mushrooms. Um good. There wasn't very much of this dish left over.

This is a close up of the food just before we said the Thanksgiving grace.

The ugly duckling was entertained with a half lemon peal. He wasn't sure he liked it, He did entertain the Chicks and the rest of us by playing with it and a few strange looks and lick tests!

After the meal, I caught the Rooster and Hen looking through the Black Friday ad's. The news paper was thick full with door buster sales. You can notice that each are checking out adds of interest to them. The football game was also on TV so the rooster had to keep his eye on both. He loves football and since he played football while in college knows a lot about the sport. I must admit I took my share of time going through the sale ad's too. The Hen and I had a fun 4 hours shopping early Friday morning. We left the house about 5:30 AM and it was only about 12 degrees out. It's not too often that we get to go shopping together. It was a special time for us and we did find some great buys too.

Here is the baby Chick #4, He also is very interested in the ad's, this would be the TOY section! Isn't he adorable when he thinks so hard?

These are the two pies, pumpkin and apple, that my daughter (the Hen) and I baked on Wednesday. It was a lot of fun and they not only looked nummy but tasted nummy as a mid afternoon treat. (because we had to let the Turkey meal settle a bit)

Would you believe the Hen even made her own cream cheese? It was Delicious too. Maybe she will do a step by step blog on how to make it sometime.

Giving Thanks

Papa Porcupine and I had the wonderful opportunity to spend a week with the Lutheran Hen (our daughter and family). We give thanks for the many fun enjoyable memories that we have of Thanksgiving week. My next blog will show a little more of the meal. We had plenty of home cooking, great food prepared by the Lutheran Hen.

Our week started out very warm, 75 degrees, wonderful for our long fun walk, we were enjoying the walk so much that we almost wore out the youngest Chick, he had to be carried part way home.

The Chicks all had to take their turn walking our Dog. He enjoyed the lovely weather and walk as much as we did. I always enjoy fall walks with plenty of crunchy leaves.

Two days later the weather had changed. NOT A LITTLE as you can see from this picture.

With snow on the ground, a north wind and 17 degrees. We did have a lot of fun in the snow during the warmest part of the day. I think trying to throw snow at Nana was the main activity. The snow was too cold to stick for snow balls but a lot of snow was flying through the air. OK, OK! I admit I did through some myself.

Some of the fun things we did indore's were making and eating Carmel apples, played Barbie dolls, puppets, Star wars, played several games, colored, drew, Lincoln logs, scrap booking,

and made a Ginger bread house. The 3 oldest Chicks read some for us and we can't believe how well they read and improve from each visit.

In the up top picture you can see Chick #3 with a bright idea to decorate the back side of the Ginger bread house.

WOW, now you can tell it was a candy smiley face. What a cute idea that was!
Here is Chick #1 adding things to the very fully decorated house. It was a lot of fun especially with the 4 chicks helping.

This is toward the beginning of the project.

Even Papa Porcupine had a hand in decorating the Gingerbread house.

From Thanksgiving to Christmas in a day! I helped the Hen decorate their home with their many Christmas decorations. Only thing left now is for the Rooster to put up the outdoor lights and the Christmas tree. This home certainly displays the true meaning of Christmas with many Nativities in each room. I believe me and the Chicks counted 15!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the Chicks.

This is Chick #1 as she works on her scrap book. You can tell the seriousness of this big project and how busy she was! She looks beautiful in that hat, just like her mother, The Hen can wear almost any hat and look gorgious!

Hear is Chick #2. He had just finished a Lincoln Log project.

He is very creative and I might add very good at playing the game "CLUE" He beet me twice. I think he might have seen my hand!!! It was a lot of fun though.

This is Chick #3, She was showing me some of her dance moves. She is learning a lot since this is her first year in dance. She also loves to dress up so will do almost anything to change clothes and

put on a show. She also has a great imagination and we put on a great puppet show.

And here is the precious chick #4. It was hard for me to pick just one favorite picture of him. I think it was a tie between about 4 or 5! I love this one because all the other chicks had gotten cold and were already in the house. Of course they had been out several minutes before us due to taking so long to get the #4 chick dressed warm enough. He loved the snow and just before I took this picture he told me, "I'm going to stay out in the snow forever!" I love his little cold rosy cheeks. It wasn't long before we decided we had better go in for a cup of hot chocolate!

What a fun week even though all 4 of the chicks had a mild flue bug. We Give Thanks for all the blessings God has given us!