Winter Wonderland

We sure miss our dear friends in Florida. I am thinking it might be colder here than there!

Look at all the snow we are getting today!!!

 Let's just say the kids are loving this snow!

 Tim says, "Woo-hoo! Snow!"

Josh says, "I wish you were here Jonathan!"

Pittsburgh Fun

We have had a busy month! In addition to all of the normal Christmas excitement, we have been busy with some other things too! Earlier this fall, some friends gave us 5 free tickets to the Pittsburgh Zoo. When I mentioned this to a friend from our homeschool gym and swim, she said they have passes to the zoo and that they would love to go with us. So, we all went together earlier this month. This was great fun because she also could bring a friend, so all of us Mateers got to get in free. That is my kind of field trip. (Just so you know, my kids said it wasn't a REAL field trip because I still made them do math and grammar before we left. Mean Mama!!)
We did have a wonderful day at the zoo, even though it wasn't a "real" fieldtrip!

By the way, did I mention that my friend that went with us is a Creative Memories Consultant? Look at these picture collages that she created:

 Aren't these cool?!

Wait a minute - what is the Rome Coliseum doing in these pictures? 

haha, just making sure you are paying attention!

(Actually the Coliseum is a picture we are adding to our lapbooks that I mentioned earlier this year. 

More on that in another post!)

Then, just a few days after a rip-roaring good time at the zoo, Sarah and I headed back to Pittsburgh to see the Nutcracker Ballet. It was so fun. She had never seen it before and I hadn't seen it since I was in high school, so it was a very special day indeed. That was what Dave and I gave her for her birthday. It was just a fun and special treat.

 Sarah and I by the sign

The Sugar Plum Fairy at a photo shoot before the Nutcracker began

Sarah and I both really enjoyed the evening. We even got to go out to dinner just the 2 of us. It was a really special night!

Lots of fun activities in Pittsburgh before Christmastime!

Why?

This past weekend when the terrible tragedy occurred in Connecticut, it reminds us of the ugliness of sin. Sin is awful and we see the effects of this sin cursed world all around us. What has happened to this world? Why did this happen?

My cousin and his family live in Sandy Hook, CT. Their children are young. When I realized where the tragedy had occurred, I broke down and cried because I wasn't sure if their children could possibly have been at those schools. When I finally got word several hours later that there are 4 elementary schools in that city and their children went to one of the other schools, I was so relieved. Yet what about those families who were directly affected by this horrible experience?

How can we make sense of such a tragedy? I truly believe that only as we look at this world through the lens of the Bible can we make sense of such things. The Bible makes it clear that this world has been marred by sin. When God created the world, He pronounced it very good. So what happened? Adam and Eve were representative of all people that would come into the world, because they were the first humans created. When they disobeyed God's command, sin entered the world. (See Genesis 3) That sin affected every aspect of this world that God had created. In Romans 8, it says that "all creation groans" under the effects of sin (Romans 8: 18-25). We see that groaning all around us - from thorns on roses to death of loved ones. Death is foreign to what God originally created. The Bible declares it to be an ENEMY (see 1 Corinthians 15:20-28) - an enemy that will be destroyed.

So now we come to Christmas. Why do we celebrate Christmas anyway? Why do we rejoice that a small baby was born in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago? Because in a world that is reeling from sin, death and a curse, into His creation stepped the Lord of all Creation. Jesus was and is the Creator of life. (Colossians 1:18) Yet for all His glory, He stepped out of heaven, and came to earth as a baby. The Creator became a part of His creation. Why? To redeem the curse of sin that had affected every part of His creation. In short, He came to earth to die.

There has to be a payment for sin. The payment is costly. No good works that any person ever would do would every pay the price for the sin that we see all around us. The sin that we have within ourselves. Nothing we could do could ever be sufficient payment. Only a PERFECT sacrifice would ever pay the price of sin before a Holy and Just God. Jesus Christ was fully God and at the same time He was fully man. He was PERFECT. Not marred by sin, but completely righteous. He had done nothing to deserve the treatment He received at the hand of sinful men. Yet, because of His great love for us all, He stepped into His creation to pay that sacrifice for sin. He came to earth as a baby, died on a cross becoming sin for us, so that if we would believe in Him, we have all of Christ's righteousness reckoned to us. (Romans 3:21-26) Then to show His power and display His glory, He didn't stay dead. He arose from the dead and won the victory over sin and death. The ugliness of sin put on display, only to be destroyed by the glory of God and the work of Jesus Christ.

Just like we saw the ugliness of sin last Friday. Just like we see the ugliness of sin every time someone close to us dies. Every time someone we know gets cancer, or any other horrible disease or sickness, we feel the effects of this sin-cursed world. And so, we come back to the manger. We come back to a God who loves His creation so much that He stepped out of heaven and came to earth to die.

Then when we believe in Christ and live for Him alone, we have this HOPE: "And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying or pain; the first things have passed away." Revelation 21:3-5

My heart aches for every single family affected by the happenings last Friday. I pray for them and I pray that the God of all Hope will reach out to them in love this Christmas.

Look Who is 10!

Our sweet Sarah turned 10 a few days ago. It is hard to believe how fast they grow. Everyone always told me that when the children were even smaller, "Enjoy these days. They grow fast!" I guess as the children get bigger every year, it seems more and more the truth. It goes so fast.

So, anyway, our Sarah is 10. We had a delightful birthday for her. The Sunday before her actual birthday, she wanted a couple of friends over. All she wanted for her cake this year was purple and yellow cupcakes that she and her friends could decorate with sprinkles, m & m's and miniature chocolate chips.

 The girls painting their nails

 decorating their Christmas pictures

 singing Happy Birthday

Sarah with her little girl friends

I think this party was esp. special because of everyone in our family, Sarah probably had the hardest time with the move. God is always so gracious to us and He has provided her with some very dear friends here (just like he did in Florida.) Even though we miss our dear friends in Florida, it has been neat to see all of the children blossom this year, not least of which, our Sarah.

Deck Them Halls and Ho, Ho, Ho

Christmas is one of our favorite times of the year. I have had such a great time decorating this year. Maybe it is because we have a house to decorate for Christmas, or because the children are so excited about it, but it has been a very fun season. We are all really enjoying it.

 The tree and the mantle.

Look! We have a mantle this year to hang our stockings on! It is so much fun!

(I have never had a mantle to hang the stockings on. Last year we just stuck them to the wall, so I love the fact that we hung them on our fireplace!!!)

Craft time with Sarah

I already wrote about how I love Thanksgiving. And I do. I love it. I also really love Christmas. The excitement starts with Thanksgiving, carries right on through Christmas, then goes all the way to our anniversary on January 2nd. Yes, this is a wonderful time of the year.

This year I decided to make a special craft with Sarah for Christmas. My mom and I made one set of these years ago and so this year I carried on the tradition with my daughter. We made fun little Christmas trees out of scraps of fabric and those Styrofoam cones you can get at JoAnn's. Above is the finished product, but I also wanted to show a few pictures of us making them.

First we cut the fabric into 3 in squares

Then we folded the fabric into small squares, with a small piece of batting inside. We used fabric needles to attach them to the Styrofoam cones. We started at the bottom and went around the cones until we got to the top.

Then when we were finished, we added gold ribbon to finish it off. Fun Christmas memories.

What are you THANKFUL for?

I love Thanksgiving. It is one of my favorite holidays. I have loved it for years. It is so much more than the turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pies. It is the essence of all that we should be all the time - THANKFUL. God has blessed us with so much more than we deserve and I want to live my life full of thanksgiving. So in an effort to fight against that tendency to complain, we are trying to be thankful ourselves and teach our children to be thankful as well. (I am ashamed to say we complain much more than we should.)

So this Thanksgiving, we decided to remind ourselves of some of what we have to be thankful for. We made a banner that said THANKFUL and then we each took a letter to write down some of the things for which we are thankful. (Dave and I shared a letter.) Then 2 of the letters, we mailed down to some of our friends from Florida for them to write a few things they are thankful for as well.

Here is our Thankful banner:

Here is our 2 letters sent from our church family from Florida:

(F was for Florida and for friends, family and fun!)

For Thanksgiving this year, we traveled down to S. Carolina to see my parents and we had such a wonderful time. We, of course, had the normal yummy things to eat for Thanksgiving, but we also shared what we were thankful for as well. What a wonderful time spent together remembering all of the Lord's blessings.

Here is a picture of all of us Thanksgiving morning:

Fall fun

OK, so this is a little late, but it is still a fun picture.

The snowboarder, the fireman, Lady Liberty, a princess, and Buzz Lightyear 

The little town we live in had a parade the weekend before Halloween where you could "trick or treat" at the local businesses. The kids were also supposed to BE in the parade. It was a short parade, but it was still fun.

 (Yes, Tim did have a different outfit for the parade than in the first picture.)

 Josh. the snowboarder. He came up with his outfit himself. I liked how he duct-taped his snowboard to his shoes. :)

Lady Liberty in the parade

Thanksgiving

Today I thought I would let Sarah's creative writing be my post about Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving

by Sarah Mateer

Thanksgiving is coming up. It is only 10 days til Thanksgiving. I think that Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. It makes our hearts glad and thankful for all that we have, not what we want. It also gets our hearts ready for Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Another thing I like about Thanksgiving is that you can't change it to be something else, like you can with Christmas or Easter. I mean, its name is Thanksgiving! What a good time to thank God for all He has given us.

Home Improvements

Here are a few more pictures of our house, for those who are interested. A few months ago, I put up this blog about our new house. Everyone got a picture of their favorite part of the house. Well, my favorite part of the house just got finished.

I never included a picture of the addition built off the back of the house, but this was one of the rooms that helped me to fall in love with this house in the first place. After some help from a dear friend here, we finally got it rearranged and decorated. I LOVE THIS ROOM. We are so thankful to the Lord for giving us this house and for His many good gifts to us.

The Beach in our home

We finally finished our bathroom. It is a long story and I will spare the details here, but we had to do some work on our bathroom after we moved in. I had a good friend in Kentucky (yes you, Tracy) who had a beach bathroom. Now, at the time when we lived near her, I was never much into the beach. But, after living in Florida and growing to appreciate it very much, I knew I wanted a beach bathroom in our new house. So, before we moved, I went and bought some beach souvenirs to put in our new bathroom. I am very pleased with the result.

 

This is a close-up of some of my souvenirs from Florida:

Some shell frames that I filled with pictures of the kids at the beach and packages of shells.

Adventures in Greece

For the past 3 weeks, the kids and I have been studying ancient Greece. It has been fascinating. I think (once again) I am learning as much as they are!

First we learned about Democracy in Greece and how it is similar and different from the democracy that we have here in America. We also learned about the Trojan horse and the kids and I built a Trojan Horse out of cardboard. (We used Anna's grocery cart for the body so it could even "roll" into Troy. hahaha)

All three of the children helped to build the Trojan Horse.
Tim is holding a "torch" that the men of Greece used to signal their man in the city of Troy.

Then we studied the importance of the theater in ancient Greece and Josh and Sarah did a whole play out of their Lego minifigures. They actually did the play about The Trojan Horse as well. I will try to post the little video later!

Then, the final week that we were studying Greece, we learned about the Olympics. We made shirts the first day of that week that looked like the Olympic Flag. This was such a great craft because all the kids were able to do it! I saved jars and we used the top of the jars for the circles that you see on the flag. Then we did one color at a time, dipped the jar into the fabric paint (poured out in a circle on a paper plate) and then "printed" it onto the shirt to make the first color of the circles on the flag. We just dipped the jar, printed it on the shirt and then passed it to the next person. First we did blue, then yellow, then black, then green, and finally red.

We also learned about the history of the flag and the history of the Olympics. There are quite a few differences between  the original Olympics and the current Olympics! The last day of that week, we did our own Olympics and even made our own gold medals! It was a fun, educational time!

 The kids in their Olympic Shirts

 Tim carrying the "torch" (made out of a branch with bright colored leaves)

Sarah throwing the javelin

Pumpkin Farm

Last Saturday, we had the opportunity to go to a pumpkin farm in the area. It is one of my favorite fall activities. (I know, the list is growing! Truly, I feel that the Lord has esp. blessed us by this fall this year.) It was a very special day. We went to a pumpkin farm we have gone to a couple of times with Dave's parents and we went with them again this year. This pumpkin farm has a hayride where you go and pick your pumpkin, and other activities like face painting, corn mazes and goat feeding. Tim also really loved these extra-large tricycles they had at the farm. He thought they were hysterical (although I am not sure I got a picture of those!)

 on the hayride with Mom-Mom 

 Our sweeties with their pumpkins:

awww...our littlest pumpkin

the kids with their pumpkins and with Pop-Pop and Mom-Mom

Hozak's Farm has this cute thing that says, "How Tall this fall?" Joshua and Sarah have had their picture taken by these for a couple of years! It's amazing to see how tall they really are this fall!

(not sure who the random kid is with Sam)

I love these things you stick your head through.

Well, I guess you could say we pretty much wiped Anna out before we got home!