Glimpses of Christmas

Well Christmas has come and Santa Clause made his appearance. For Emily she kind of had a rock star theme this year. Between her Hannah Montana pop up stage, Hannah Montana wig, her new pink guitar, microphone and stand she is ready for her first world tour. It was really cute last night as she sang on her little microphone, 'happy Birthday Jesus' and we all listened. She came back out for an encore performance of Away in a manger. She has been enjoying getting to spend time with her Grammy and Poppaw who are visiting with us from Georgia.







Josh was particulary pumped about his new Diego train set or as he calls it his 'eggo' train. Him and his sister have had fun playing with each other for the most part with the occassional meltdown over playing with some toys. He also had a little performance on the little microphone singing 'God is so good'.

Hidden Cove Christmas Party

Well, our neighborhood social director, Tommye Barrett, hosted the first annual Hidden Lake Estates Christmas party. It was a great time. We had about 21 kids crammed into her living room and a bunch of adults. I think one of the main themes was sugar as it came in various forms like multiple cookies, icing, sprinkles, cake and candy canes (our kids were super charged chihuahuas when we got home). Tommye had this like 20 ft kid-sized banqueting table that like ran almost the whole length of her living room. We had all the chairs lined up and they decorated cookies, they made santa hats with cotton balls and glue, they had a battle royale in the playroom. Then the big man himself showed up, S.C., and passed out presents for all the kids. Then we sang some Christmas songs and did a kids version of the Christmas story. One of my favorite parts was getting to sing 'Away in a manger' (over and over as they kept wanting to do it again and again) and the kids just sang it at the top of their lungs and also did interpretative dancing all over the living room. It was pretty awesome. Then Tommye brought out the Jesus Birthday cake and we sang happy birthday and the kids blew out the birthday cake. Uh oh, Emily wasn't there...so we relight the candle and sing it again. Uh oh, some one else missed out so I'm pretty sure we relit the candle a third time. Yeah it was complete Christmas chaos but pretty awesome for us all to be together.

Christmas in Wimberley

Well we spent the weekend out in Wimberley and tonight we did our gift exchange. Joshua had his santa hat on and we asked Emily if she wanted to wear her hat but she said that she wanted to be Mary. So we proceeded to create a make-shift Mary costume out of baby sheets and then during the reading of the Christmas story by my Dad from Luke 2, Emily, I mean, Mary walked out on cue and stood in front of the baby Jesus. It was a pretty cool moment. To add dramatic effect she happened to have a light up shirt underneath her 'sheets' that made it look like her heart was glowing as my dad read the part about Mary pondering and treasuring in her heart all that God was doing through the birth of Jesus.
Josh and Emily both received these really cool books from Aunt Trina and Uncle Brad. Here is a clip of Josh reading from his new book about himself.

Christmas Time Snapshots

"Freaky" the Snowman
So we are trying to join in the festive spirit of our neighborhood with Christmas lights and inflatable Christmas creatures, etc. Everything was looking pretty good until our neighbor pointed out that our inflatable snowman up in our second story window had a slightly 'freaky' look to him that was just down right scary. As we stood in my driveway a week or so ago and stared up into it the second story window we beheld the above sight. The first freaky factor was the fact that the snow man's eyes seemed to be looking right at you wherever you moved. The second freaky factor was pointed out by Ted our neighbor. He pointed out that lighting the snowman from the bottom increased the freakiness exponentially. We also discussed how there is something spooky about taking a normally loveable creature like a snowman and casting it in an eerie way (like a 'clown' from Stephen King's 'It', or 'Chuckie' the little doll, etc).
The Advent Calendar
Well, Whitney's mom got us an advent calendar for the kids this year (as pictured above). And it's been quite an experience. They definitely are into it. So as you can see there is a little book that you pull out for each day of December thus building the anticipation towards Christmas day and then on Christmas day you have the big book about Jesus birth that you read. Well there favorite part about the whole experience is the nightly pulling the day's book out. To keep it fair we alternate between Emily and Josh pulling the book out each night. Emily, being 4, gets this and sees it as fair. Josh, being 2, does not. When it's his turn to pull the book, there is peace on earth, and I am at ease. Yet when Emily gets to pull the book out Josh has a complete cataclysmic meltdown every time. 'I wanna pull it out!!!!!!'. He will listen to no reasoning and there is no substitute for getting him to stop the meltdown. Finally, I've just started letting Emily pull it out and then I'll put it back in and then let Josh pull it out which seems to work for now. Another little surprise about this Advent experience is the books themselves. They may look like cute little books but they are packed with text, have very few pictures and are exerpts from classic literature like 'the Wind in the Willows', 'the Nutcracker', 'Little Women', etc. So our kids are having a little mini Masterpiece Theatre each night before they go to bed. But overall it's been a memorable experience.

Making Christmas more meaningful

Well we're two weeks out from Christmas and the insaneness of the season I'm sure is pressing in on all of us. Here's a few things to pass on that might help this season.

Some Christmas Traditions I've heard about lately from others:

Sit around and read the Christmas story out of Luke 2 and then go around to each person in the family and let them pick out a Christmas carol for everyone to sing

Jesus Birthday Party - get a cake and sing happy BDay to Jesus and then have each person share what gift they want to give to Jesus on His birthday

Taking Christmas beyond your family:

Many of our families are quite blessed financially compared to the world. What about scaling back what you spend on each other this year and then build into your Christmas day together a story about how each of you has given money that will be used to bring light and hope to someone around the world who sees nothing but darkness and despair. For us we have known God to be a good God. He has provided for us and cared for us. We have been blessed to be in a country where we have heard the good news about Jesus and the great love He has for us. Yet the majority of the world wakes up to poverty...to filth....to miles and miles of walking to search for clean water....to Aids and disease....to violence....to forced labor and cruel hours in a plant or plantation....to prostitution....to mal-nutrition....and on and on.....How are these people supposed to believe that there is a good God who loves them? God has chosen us to be Christ's ambassadors and to be the ones who share with the world His great love for every single person of every single tribe of every single nation of every single language. Here's a couple of great ways to take Christmas and the presence of Jesus beyond your family this Christmas:

1. Give a goat, clean water, medical aid, education, etc through the World Vision gift catalogue. Go to http://www.worldvision.org/. For each gift you give you can print out a Christmas card that describes that gift. Maybe each person could give a different gift, share about it during the family gathering on Christmas day, hang it on the tree and then once you're all done the family could pray together over all the different lives that have been touched.

2. Adopt a child through compassion. How about this Christmas if you haven't adopted a child through Compassion you do that. The cool thing about Compassion adoption is that it's a long term commitment that will truly change an individual by meeting their basic life needs (food, clothing, medical care) and also give them a future (through education) and introducing them to Jesus (through Biblical teaching and discipleship). Just think how much of an impact we could have as one life is changed, a family can then be changed, a community can be changed, a city can be changed, a nation can be changed, a continent can be changed and the world can be changed. Here's another way to think about it. Compassion is a great way to begin fighting the war on terror. One of the things that terrorist groups do is that they snatch young children away and start brainwashing them with their extremism and violence. Compassion is right on the front lines of reclaiming children for Christ and fighting back against these aggressive groups. Compassion is part of raising up a new generation of Christ-followers who will stand up for God's Kingdom and His causes around the world. What an awesome thing you could be a part of. Go to their webpage and make a difference for eternity this christmas at http://www.compassion.com/.

Oh Christmas Tree

So kind of spontaneously we decided to go and get a real tree over at Wal-Mart. So I go grab one and shove it in our car. I envision a simple take it out of the car and put it in the tree stand and whamo, instant tree. Um not quite. So I'm reading on the label of the tree stand about the fact that I get to saw off the bottom part of the trunk. Oh boy. Well, So I'm out in the dark about 10:00 last night scrambling through my garage looking for different saws. Three different saws and 25 minutes later and exhausted I finally got the crazy thing sawed off. I then take it in the house and then look behind me to discover I no longer have a floor but a brand new carpet of Christmas tree needles. Then I stick the tree in the stand and discover that it won't go all the way in because there are some low branches that are in the way. So back outside I go to saw some more. Finally we then bring it back in and at last we have it in the stand.

Christmas time is fun to watch through the eyes of our kids. Emily is a very inquisitive 4 year old. As all parents do around Christmas time when we get desperate for order in our house we go for the old 'Be careful, Santa Clause is watching.' Emily, who is always processing and thinking, than asks 'how does he see me?'. That's where the parent manual ended. It's these why and how questions that throw me for a loop. So I think our answer was some cooperative effort between God and Santa Clause that results in this supernatural ability to see children and what they're doing.

Josh's favorite Christmas song has been 'Deck the Halls' or as he calls it 'boughs of holly'. On Saturday he was playing over at Kyra's house across the street and noticed that there was a Christmas tree in their living room with presents underneath. So at just the opportune time he decided to sneak over there and begin ripping open one of the presents. Kyra spotted him and notified her Mommy and Daddy. They rushed down to discover that miraculously out of the several options Josh could have opened he happened to open a present that they were going to give to him. Wow is he one lucky dude.

Express Yourself!

Well Josh finally made his debut into the world of church musical programs. Like his big sister and old man he seems entirely uninhibited at getting down and shaking his groove thing. He seems to break from any prescribed choreography and branch out into his own interpretive dancing expression. This musical extravanza happened this past Monday at their end of the year Mothers Day Out performance. Big sister and Kyra also performed as displayed in the video below.