A Little Change

Recently, one of my cousins has had some creepy, weird, dangerous stuff happen partly because of her blog. It spooked me enough to at least take the real names out of mine, so from now on:

My Husband=The Cowboy
My oldest son=The Guitar Picker
My middle daughter=The Horse Whisperer
My youngest daughter=The Zoo Keeper

I'm not sure if I'm creeped out enough to stop showing pictures. I'll have to pray about it. I love sharing pictures of my family with you all, but I'll probably slack off a little at least.

Christmas Home Tour

This is posted late. In fact, I took down the banner to the home tour because I knew I wouldn't get to it in time. BUT I figured late is better than never, so, WELCOME, come in and see some of our Christmas decorations!

The first thing that draws the eye when you walk in the front door is the tree TREE. It's huge. And it's crooked. But it smells wonderful if you pick off a needle and crush it with your fingernail.



When we first married, we decided that we would buy only one special ornament a year, and the rest of the decorations would be things like cookies and popcorn strings, and by the time we were old we would have a wonderful tree full of meaningful ornaments.

Well, we didn't realize that as soon as we had kids, and as soon as those kids were old enough to put glue to paper and shake some glitter out of a tube we would have LOTS of ornaments. And then the SPECIAL ones would start getting dropped and broken. And the tree looks really bare if you are too busy burping babies to make popcorn strings and bake cookies to hang on the tree. So, the plan was changed a bit, and we did get some other ornaments. We STILL try to buy a new one every year, and if we go on vacation or something we try to get a Christmas ornament from there.

Here is the first one we bought, on our honeymoon to the Grand Canyon:



Here is one we got in Hawaii...I think it's my favorite so far:



This one is from Disneyland. Ahh...it takes me back to the warm family memory of buying it, "Oh, look at this wonderful shop of Breakable Victorian ornaments! DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING! Honey, could you take the kids out to buy a $5.OO orange juice from that kiosk so I can look at something besides plastic coconuts and pirate swords?"



Oh, look! Our first Christmas together..awwww...



Ahem.

Well, I was lazy this year, and The Zoo Keeper did most of the decorating. Her unique tastes are displayed throughout our home this year. Check out the Noel Pigs, all dressed up with gold ribbon taped to their pink plastic bodies:



Here is a Fall Fairy Bear, holding a sparkley pine cone on a stick, which makes it totally Christmasy:



Here is our super cool Mega Block Playmobile (Oops!) people nativity set:



Not too sure why the Angel Gabriel has a magic wand:



This camel is ready for anything:



This is festive, in a macabre sort of way:



Here is our Advent wreath. We don't use the purple and pink candles because the whole time growing up, my mom used red. I think she used red because she could never find purple and pink, but now anything but red looks wrong to me, so I'm raising another generation of kids that do it wrong. At least it does it's job of causing us to reflect on why we are celebrating Christmas in the first place, and the red candles can represent the blood Jesus shed to cover our sins.



Here are some big cans full of fudge, toffee, peanut butter fudge, and rum balls. The little village is actually candles, and they didn't do too well in storage this year, so before I put away the Christmas stuff this year, I'm going to burn them and watch the houses melt. Should be fun!


Last of all, here are the Christmas cards I have received so far:



Thanks for stopping by, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

"Two Things" and Wreaths Across America

Last week's Two Things challenge was "hold and value" I decided to post this picture for the challenge (be sure to click on the picture to get a bigger version- you can see it a lot better):



I love the line of rough looking Vietnam Veteran motorcycle riders standing at attention as the color guard goes by, holding on to freedom by having fought for it in a very real way, and reminding us all to value it and hold on to it with all our might.

This picture is from the Wreaths Across America ceremony The Guitar Picker was in on Saturday.

Wreaths Across America was started by Morrill Worcester - President of Worcester Wreath Company explains his desire to develop the Wreaths Across America project:

"Our goal is to expand the recognition of those who serve our country, both past, present, and future, as well as their families who deserve our support. Without the sacrifices of our veterans, there would be no opportunity to enjoy the freedoms, the life we live today."

He wanted to do something special for our veterans after 9/11. He started by placing wreaths on graves at Arlington National Cemetery, and it has spread across the country to veteran's cemeteries all over. You can read more about it here:

Wreaths Across America

Here are a few more pictures from the ceremony:













Included in The Guitar Picker's speech was this quote from Ronald Regan:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

Hope

1 Corinthians 13:12
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

What an exciting thought, to "know even as also I am known". Imagine, knowing God like He knows me! Is that even POSSIBLE?! Wait and see!

Yzma Baby

Because I absolutely ADORE "The Emperor's New Groove" and make it a point to quote it whenever possible...

Light Blogging

Add me to the ranks of People Who Have a LOT on Their Plates and expect light blogging for the next month.

Maintenance Monday fell by the wayside this week, and I haven't done Two Things for a couple of weeks. I decided it was Not Sane to beat myself up over not getting to my blog posts, so I decided to just be upfront about how flaky I'm going to be about posting for the next several weeks. If you are one of the 6 people who regularly read this blog, I LOVE you, so I don't want you to waste your net time waiting for my page to load just so you can give a few pink flies to my starving frog because there is no new post.

I'll be here, just not every day.

Merry Christmas!

Simplify

Here's a wonderful blog post about simplifying Christmas.

We just don't need so much STUFF! We are drowning in it. And I LOVE her take on gift cards. I refuse to participate in gift card exchanges. A gift should be thoughtful, not just a money exchange.

And for good measure, here's a good one about hospitality.