Happy Birthday Jesus!!!

We made a birthday cake this year to help celebrate the real reason for Christmas.

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Jesus!!!

6:45pm Christmas Eve...

And I've finally finished the handmade Christmas stockings...  :-D
(I finished sewing them earlier in the week and even got them hung, but I hadn't finished them with all our names.)  I am so excited about these stockings!  The colors in the photos didnt turn out very well but the are Christmas red and green. :)

Breaking the Christmas Fast

When we were first married, we loved to decorate for Christmas.  I had picked out this very elegant theme of cream and burgundy with strands of fake pearls, gorgeous golden crosses, and numerous lighted angels.  I'd never been much of a fan of Santa Claus, elves, or the "North Pole" it always seemed to detract too much the "real meaning" of Christmas.  We tried to keep our focus on Christ.  The whole family participated in the local living nativity story.  We even decorated a Birthday cake for Jesus each year.

But then many years ago (I think it happened somewhere around the time of the birth of our first daughter), we began to question the meaning behind all the traditions.  We were told that the true December 25th holiday was first celebrated by Pagans not Christians; they called it Yule.  The Christmas tree too was supposed to have originated from the pagans.  The beautiful "angels" on the tree didn't really resemble the angels described in the Bible at all.  

And so after studying the history of Christmas and its traditions, we decided it was best not to celebrate it any more. Yes we still gathered with the extended family on Christmas day, and we still sang the Christmas hymns at church, but we stopped decorating, we stopped giving gifts, and we stopped celebrating.

Several times since then my dear husband has briefly mentioned considering ending this Christmas fast.  I have always been very reluctant and honestly probably tried to ignore the notion.  I wanted no part in this PAGAN holiday.

This year was different though.  It wasn't a discussion and it wasn't up for consideration.  My husband said he wanted to get a tree, and (so for once) I finally got behind the idea.  He wanted to make this Christmas a Christmas to remember filled with lots of family time and fun together.  And so this year we are CELEBRATING and our house has never looked more festive.  We have made cinnamon applesauce ornaments, popcorn cranberry garland, gorgeous wreaths, and even numerous jingle bells.  

I am so thankful that my husband is wiser than I am.  I am also very thankful for all the celebration and the decorations. I am thankful for all the memories we are making with the children.

So instead of figuratively saying BA HUMBUG; this year we are proclaiming Merry Christmas CHRIST IS BORN!  And in the process we are living out the chief end of man by glorifying God and enjoying him forever. 

My gift wrapped JESUS decoration

(Close up of the wrapping paper)

Our handprint Christmas tree

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. Corinthians 10:31 

Happy BELATED Thanksgiving!!!

Well I am a little late, but I still wanted to get my post published about thanksgiving before starting in our Christmas festivities here.  

This past year has been filled with life and death, joys and sorrows.  It has been a terrible, yet wonderful year.  Through it all God has been at work, moving mightily amidst our family.

Earlier in November we enjoyed our first visit to the New Hope Fellowship's First Thanksgiving celebration.  We enjoyed turkey, corn bread, frumenty, fresh root beer, and LOTS of great fellowship.  It helped remind us of the wonderful origins of Thanksgiving.  It was truly a wonderful blessing to our family!

(Our family photo taken at the First Thanksgiving Celebration)

Literally the Thursday before Thanksgiving, my husband briefly mentioned really wanting to decorate next year for Thanksgiving athough he thought it was probably too late to decorate this year.  We went shopping that day instead for Christmas decorations at Hobby Lobby.  BUT to our pleasant surprise.  There were still nice Thanksgiving decorations and they were 80% off!!! We ended up buying just a few things to decorate the dining room.

After bringing them home, I wanted to add a few more decorations too, so I made a scavenger hunt for the children to gather some of the miscellaneous items from around the farm we could use to decorate.  Then we all worked together making making some more decorations.

Here are a few pictures (it was really difficult to get the lighting right shooting into the open window)..

 The decorations the kids gathered and I assembled :)

The dining table center pieces

The flowers strand which decorated the picture window.

 You can't really see the decorations in this picture, but I just loved the view of the empty field from the dining room table.

Then on Thanksgiving day, we enjoyed the day spent with our extended family at my mom's house.  We took more fresh root beer and some delicious rosette buns.  On Saturday we celebrated our own Thanksgiving as a family.  My husband cooked a delicious turkey with all the fixings.  The children and I helped with the side dishes.  It was delicious!!!