It's Never Not Busy

Life always seems pretty busy for me....it could just be I'm not a very good multi tasker & homebody : ) I feel like I've been running so much lately . Sat...I had my daughter's piano recital. I picked up her great grandmother to bring her to the recital and visited with her awhile when I took her back home at her new assisted living apartment. Sunday was church in the morning , home for lunch, and then out Christmas shopping, picked up 2 of my kids from evening church (they spent the afternoon with some friends). Monday was Bible study in the evening, but I had to stop off and get a snack and small gift for the gift exchange we were having. Tues ~ We went and had family pictures taken. Wed. ~ Denist appointment in the morning, grocery shopping since I was out and church in the evening. Today ~ This morning my daughter had piano lessons. I wrapped the majority of the Christmas presents we bought. My kids and I are going to bake some cookies for their teen church outing tomorrow and Sat. Fri ~ Taking my kids to a teen fellowship where they will be having dinner, going Christmas shopping for a needy family at church, then they will be wrapping the presents. Sat ~ I will be taking the kids to Christmas carol with their particular class at church. Sunday is our big church program and I'm sure I'm forgetting something. So that's my busy week. Still have lots of baking to do and some shopping : ) Gotta go and get busy : )

Sickies

I've finally decided we must have a virus going around our house. It seemed to manifest it's self in different ways .....some symptoms very apparent and some so subtle, I didn't even realize it was a symptom. My 2 yeard old dd had diarreha the entire week or so after Thanksgiving.....she then started with the sniffles. About that time my ears started plugging up and my 10 year old dd started complaining about her jaw hurting. Now all of my girls have sniffles and stuffy noses and they did have sore throats. I had the same syptoms including the sore jaw and my tummy has been bothering me off and on all week....feeling the worst today. I just want to curl up in a ball and go to sleep. It's hard to be sick this time of year when you have so much to do for the holidays.

If you think of it please pray for us, my 10 year old dd has her piano recital tomorrow. It would be terrible if we were feeling miserable : (

Christmas Traditions

This picture was taken last Christmas morning. My then 1 year old daughter was blowing out the Christ candle to our advent/nativity set. Read below to find out more about our Christmas tradition.

I'm thankful Friday has arrived! It has been a long and busy week. My youngest daughter and oldest son have picked up an intestinal bug of some sort from my brother's family, who stayed with us the week of Thanksgiving. My poor brother started having diarrhea the day he arrived to our home from out of state . His boys had it for the few days before they left to come here.

It's been a week and my 2 year old dd has had it the entire week.....my son has had it for a few days. DD wakes up in the middle of the night with a tummy ache and diarrhea. She's acting okay the rest of the day but it is sad to see her complain of her tummy hurting.

Wednesday I took my 7 year old son to an appointment with a pediatric cardiologist to check his heart murmur. The good news is everything is fine...it's a normal heart murmur. The not so good news is that he had several high blood pressure readings during the visit. The doctor had an echo cardiogram performed because his blood pressure was high. That checked out fine. He ordered a blood test to check his kidneys and a urinalysis.....those checked out fine as well. I have to take him back next month to check his blood pressure again. The nurse said he could just have what they call "white coat" hypertension. The visit with the doctor makes him so nervous that his blood pressure goes up. I'm guessing that's all it is.

Since there are so many negative opinions out there about the "wrong" Christmas traditions that Christian's celebrate, I thought I would share with you what "wrong" traditions we celebrate LOL!

This weekend we are hoping to go and cut down our Christmas tree. We have a horse drawn wagon pull us back to the field of our choice (depending on what type of tree we want) We are given a hand saw to cut down the tree we choose. The wagon picks us back up , bringing our tree along. They wrap it up nicely for us and then we are ready to go.......not before we stop into the heated barn to pay for our tree , enjoy roasting marshmallows for smores, roast hot dogs in the fire place and enjoy hot cocoa, which are all free! It's alot of fun and a cherised family tradition.

We finally started our advent readings last night, only 4 days late...we caught up though . My kids love our advent tradition. We started celebrating advent about 6 years ago. We read a book trilogy written by Arnold Ytreeide. We started with Jotham's Journey the first year, the second year Tabitha's Travel and the third year Batholomew's Passage. We started over again back to Jotham's Journey and are now doing Bartholomew's Passage again.

Each Sunday of advent we light a new candle to our advent/nativity set . The first candle (purple) represents Hope....it reminds us that God's people hoped for a Saviour (Isaiah 9: 2 & 6). The second candle (purple) represents Peace. It reminds us that Jesus came to bring us peace. (Micah) 4:3-4

The third candle (pink) represents Joy....it reminds us of the joy Jesus brings us. (Luke 2:8-11)

The 4th candle(purple) represents Love....it reminds us that God sent Jesus because He loves us. (1 John 4: 7-9)

The last candle(white) we light on Christmas morning. Each Christmas morning before we open gifts, we light that white candle which represents Christ. We are reminded that He is the light of the world. (Luke 2:1-20) We read our last chapter of our advent book and are reminded of what the day is really about. It's really a blessing!

These books are all fictions books that are historically accurate to the time of Jesus's birth. Each book is based on the same thing ,the events that lead up to the birth of Jesus. It is told from 3 different perspectives (characters) They are very action packed /real to life of that time and they keep the kids hanging and excited to listen to the next night's chapter. Following each chapter is a short devotion. I think they are awesome books and would recommend them .

Each new week of advent (Sunday) I let the kids choose a special snack to eat after we read the chapter for that day. We have some Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes for this week. So what are your traditions?