Epiphany The 12th Day of Christmas

Today is the twelfth day after Christmas, The start of Epiphany season. This celebrates the visit of the Wise Men who came in search of the newborn King. Today's church service was centered around the visit of the Wise Men and the gifts they brought. In Bible class we watched the final half of the Nativity story where the picture above is from. This shows the part where the Wise men arrived. I love the movie and all the special meaning captured in the writing and the filming of The Nativity Story. I know the writers, producers and actors had to have prayed for God to guide their talents and use them according to His good and gracious will.

This is my gift just after my grandchildren helped me place these by my personal ceramic Nativity. The boxes are decorated so beautiful, I can't help but think of what the original gifts by the wise men might have looked like.

The first gift mentioned in Matthew 2 was the GOLD. Gold was given to show the infant Jesus, God's very Son was a KING! A King for all mankind.

The second Gift mentioned was FRANKINCENSE. Frankincense is a resin from the dried sap of the Boswellia tree. Frankincense was burned as a incense during the sacrifices at the Temple. This gift was to show that Jesus would be the ultimate sacrifice for all people, for all our sins.
Frankincense and Gold were equally precious.

The third gift mentioned was MYRRH. Myrrh is also a resin used as incense and also put on dead bodies. Myrrh has a bitter fragrance. This was to show the bitter job that Baby Jesus had come to earth to do.

The glowing light from the star that guided the wise men to the place where Baby Jesus lay, reminds us that Jesus is still the light and we need to let that light shine through us that all might know that great gift of salvation.

. . .And they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures,

they offered Him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Matthew 2 verse 11b

On The Fifth Day of Christmas . . .

It has been awhile since I have blogged. We have been busy enjoying our family as our oldest daughter, husband and 4 children have spent a week with us. I will be sharing a lot of the happenings with you.

What a blessing it was to have our family together for Sunday morning church and then our gift opening. Our five sweet grandchildren were quite excited and barely had time to pose for this picture. Since the first day of Christmas is on the 26Th, this was on the Fifth day of Christmas. What a fun day it was. Opening the gifts took about 1 1/2 hour as we take turns opening so everyone can enjoy watching each other and share in the joy of both giving and receiving.

It was a great time for our family!

Above is my oldest grandson opening his Lego's gift from us. He was quite excited and couldn't wait to get started setting this Star Wars Lego pieces together. Even the other Grandchildren were excited and anxious for him to set it together.

My oldest Granddaughter had been wanting a fountain pen like her Nana (me) likes to use. You can see from her expression that she was surprised and excited about her fountain pen, refills and pretty pink Journal.

Here is grandson #2 (also known as chick #2 from my daughters blog, The Lutheran Hen) He was happy to receive his first Webkinz since his older sister already had two. These cute little furry stuffed animals have a card with that allows the webkinz to be a virtual pet on line and thus they can interact with other online webkinz. It's hard to explain but this popular pet is a lot of fun.

Below is granddaughter #2, she is 5 years old and has the cutest personality. When Santa didn't bring her a pink pony webkinz that she wanted she figured she would have to wait until her birthday. Little did she know that her Nana and Papa were giving her this Internet pink pony pet. She named her Rosy.

Here is our youngest grandchild using his tool set gift from us to saw open another gift from his Great Grandparents. It worked very nicely to rip through the paper on his new footy pajama's.

There is never a dull moment with our precious grandchildren around.

Our two lovely daughters received beautiful cable knit sweaters from my parents. Here on the left is our oldest daughter (the Hen) with her white sweater and our youngest daughter with her pink sweater.

Oh yes, even I had my turn opening gifts. My grand daughter was helping me discover the surprise inside this beautiful box. It is the Wise Men's gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Very lovely decorative boxes to hold a sample of the very first gifts ever given at Christmas to the Baby Jesus. What special meaning in the gifts of the magi. Later my grandchildren helped me place these three gifts around the baby Jesus in my ceramic nativity. This gift was from my youngest daughter and family, I received a Digital Photo Key chain from my oldest daughter and family. So as soon as I decide which 60 photos to put on this key chain all my friends can enjoy seeing my favorite photos. Just maybe you will be the lucky one. I will treasure these special thoughtful gifts for many years to come. I could tell a lot of thought went into these gifts. Like the special perfect gift from our loving Father in Heaven. A Savior who is Christ the Lord.

OH COME LET US ADORE HIM! OH COME LET US ADORE HIM,

OH COME LET US ADORE HIM, CHRIST THE LORD!

Puzzle update!

As you remember, this is the beautiful Nativity Puzzle by Tom duBois that we had been working on for over a week.

December 27 Th, WOW only 2 pieces left. But wait a minute, where is the last puzzle piece, we only had one left to be placed in the puzzle. After much searching of the floor and area where we had been puzzling, I (You got it) I found the lost, very final piece of the 1000 piece puzzle hiding in the couch. It's a victorious feeling to place that last piece in its place.

Here it is, complete. We did leave the puzzle up until our family arrived on Dec 29Th. Just so they could see it, as proof that we really did get it together. Then it was carefully taken apart and put back in it's box until another time. Maybe next year we might try another Christmas Theme puzzle by Tom duBois.

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.