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!