quotes of the evening

Tallulah- "I know Santa is nice, but I don't wanna sit in his lap"

Max, about Jesus' birthday cake- "How will we get His cake to heaven?"

Mommy- "Do I need to call Santa on his cell phone and tell him not to come because you arn't doing what mommy told you to do?" (just kidding, I didn't really say that, but I thought about it :)

christmas

I am finishing up the last of my handmade Christmas gifts and thinking about tomorrow; the excitement that comes with a house full of kids and piles presents, the family traditions of big breakfasts, Christmas puzzles and lounging around in our P.J.'s all morning... But mostly I am thinking about the true meaning of Christmas, what we are really celebrating, the birth of our Savior. I hope that amidst the excitement, we don't lose sight of the most wonderful gift we have ever received.

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David's throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this.
Isaiah 9:6&7

pow wow

Our friends just finished their unit on Native Americans and invited us to their Pow Wow last week. The kids had a great time playing Indian games, hunting for animals, doing native dance and having an Indian Feast afterward.

Regan helping Lulu play Indian "baseball" with pine cones as the ball.

Hunting animals by following their tracks.

Memory- someone would make a picture with these gourds, nuts and corn, then cover it up and another person would try and remember what it looked like and make the same picture.

Learning some native dance.

something I can show you now

I have been having fun with my newest toy(s).

We've gone hat happy in our house! Here are the girls modeling some of the hats I have made this week :)

can't think of a clever title...

We had our bible study over for a Christmas party last night and they just did not do their part to finish off these cookies! I still have a whole tin full!

I have been busy knitting, crocheting, sewing, painting, stringing beads etc. and am anxious to show you all the fun projects I have been working on but, unfortunately, I can't post any pictures (or even take any) until after Christmas because I don't want the kids to see what I am making! I am probably safe to write about some of it, since they are lazy readers (they mostly like to just look at the pictures on my blog), but to be safe I think I will refrain from even that.
I have not been getting too much sleep lately since I have been up late each night working on the kids presents and I have a whole other pile of projects for the day when the kids are awake! I have some templates for making miniature paper houses that I am excited to try, but I have to finish the presents I have to mail off first. I've got 4 done and only 9 more to go! Maybe I should stop rambling here and get busy :)

cookies, and random thoughts on where our stuff comes from.

Regan and Max took these pictures of of us making cookies today for our Christmas party.

Phil and I had a nice evening out last Saturday. While we were in Starbucks I found a bird ornament that just had to come home with us. Phil picked it up and looked at the label... "Made in China". This started us on a whole conversation of "what ifs"

What if, for one year, we did not buy anything made in China? What would that look like? Would we consume much less? Would our everyday lives be majorly effected? Would we spend more money, or less?

Better yet, what if we only bought American made? I started looking at some of our everyday things that we use and was happy to find that my Arbonne products are made in the USA, but some other products are not. I think you could only take the experiment so far, say for example, if I were to buy something off of Etsy, I would buy an item made by someone in the USA, but it would be too difficult to make sure that all the products they used were US made.

Either way, it would not be an easy task! Fun to talk about, and even to make ourselves more aware of where our things come from, but the whole thing might be bigger than this family can handle.

build and grow

Today we went to Lowes for their Build and Grow program. If you don't know anything about it, you should check it out. They usually host two events a month and they are FREE. The kids get a Lowes Build and Grow aprons and each time they complete a project they get a patch for their apron. Today they were making wooden ginger bread houses. It was quick and lots of fun. The kids were able to do most of it themselves, I just showed them where things went and they did the hammering and decorating.

Tallulah wasn't so sure about all that hammering :)