Christmas 2008 ~ Part Three

I finally have been able to put together my last installment for Christmas 2008. We went to the cabin and stayed for few days to celebrate the holiday with family.

Here is W with his Star Trek PEZ collection. He was pretty excited here. He doesn't just throw those smiles around. They truly have to be earned.

MK loved her bathrobe and it had her name monogrammed on it.

A received a pink guitar from Grandfather and she absolutely loved it.

Grandfather had no problem playing the pink guitar.

Here is someone else not afraid to play the pink guitar.

A loves the guitar and has wanted one for a long time. She is still practicing every day.

In the next picture, I did not exactly have a captive audience. Only one child was looking my direction but I thought the moment was sweet with him and W standing together.

After my sister distributed jelly beans they all thought she was fabulous... and they wanted to let her know how much they appreciated her.

Here is my happy little family.

The next picture was taken just before dark but there were ten young cousins scattering outside for a walk by the water.

There was a gingerbread house to build and there was definitely tasting while decorating.

Later, I happened to find MK just watching over the gingerbread house... all by herself.

Granny supervised two granddaughters making pumpkin bread.

W and Aunt R singing into colored pencils is a moment that is just a treasure.

We decided to take family pictures so we obviously collected ourselves for a great pose.

Here we are inside under the stockings my mom has made for each one of us.

There were pictures outside of my sisters and I with my Mom and Dad.

And lastly, a picture taken of my sisters and I.

That is a wrap-up of Christmas 2008 and it was all good.

The Computer Crash of 2009

My computer crashed Sunday night... a fate I have always feared. The thought of a computer crashing and all being lost has been something I have worried about. I do not even download all the pictures off my camera because of such a possibility. It could have been devastating but thanks to D, he backed up my computer on an external hard drive over the Thanksgiving holiday so only December and part of January was lost... but not completely. The work I did during that time could be retrieved from another source and remember my obsession with leaving the picture images on the camera?

Just hours before The Computer Crash of 2009, I had painstakingly gone through all the pictures and had them sized and ready to put on the blog for my Christmas Part Three post. When I returned following church, ready to load them and mark that off my list of things to do for the week everything changed.

After working on the laptop for a few days, I feel more settled sitting at my desk looking at this screen for some reason.

I have something I wanted to share and was going to right after the third Christmas post but since I am working on that draft and interrupted the order of my posts anyway I wanted to post it today.

I have several devotional books and receive several devotionals by e-mail each day. There are days, especially tough ones, when I read a devotional and it seems like it is written just for me at the very moment I need it.

Last week, I had one of those days and read the devotional below and it was so appropriate for that day and every day since I had to type it out and put it where I could see it at my desk. I do not know who wrote it as it came from The Word For You Today, a quarterly devotional we receive from church, but it speaks loudly to me.

“The wisdom that is from above is … peaceable.” James 3:17 NKJV

Keep Your Peace

Understand this: the Devil knows that God’s Word can only be “sown in peace”, so he will do everything he can to keep you from receiving it and being blessed by it. That’s why you must do whatever it takes to keep your peace. There’s power in peace! If the Devil can’t get you upset he has no power over you. He only gains control when you “lose it”. He plans to get you upset in order to steal your peace, confuse you and make you run in circles. Don’t let him.

James writes, “The wisdom that is from above is … peaceable”. In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrases this Scripture: “Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy robust community that lives right with God and enjoys its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.” (v. 17-18 TM). Notice getting along with others can be “hard work”.

So, next time you get worked up about some issue, ask yourself, “What’s the enemy trying to do here? If I give in to these emotions what will the result be?” When you’re stressed out you lose your joy, and when you lose your joy you lose your strength because “the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Ne 8:10). So today, pray, exercise self-control, and keep your peace.

Christmas 2008 ~ Part Two

At this rate, it will be February 1st before I list all the New Year's resolutions I will not be able to keep. I am all about keeping it in order so I have to go back to Christmas Day!

Here is A with some of her favorites.

MK was so excited Santa brought the things she asked for.

W loved the bicycle he hoped for and why wouldn't he?... it suits him. He will not have the training wheels on this bicycle long.
I have made chocolate-chip pancakes in the past for breakfast but it was a unanimous decision that we have the leftover lemon cake from Christmas Eve. We all had simplicity in mind .... or was it playing with presents. They played with their gifts until lunch and then we went outside for more bike riding.

I noticed the last remaining pecans on the tree. At that point, we had 82.5 POUNDS already but after working so hard to keep the crows and squirrels away I thought we should collect them all and share them with human beings who might enjoy them and not hord them away in a tree or rudely eat them and discard shells all over the driveway and yard. D was willing to reach to the highest branches with a pole and shower the rest of the pecans so we could collect them. There was another five pounds and that should do it.

After we went inside, we all had a much needed Christmas afternoon nap.

Since every store and restaurant were closed for the only day of the year, we decided we needed to go out. Even with groceries at home, the hunt for an open restaurant was pretty exciting. We discovered IHOP was open Christmas Day, along with the other 200 people there. We waited and it went surprisingly quick. We enjoyed a great dinner, which was a bit of a surprise since we marked them off our list several years ago.

After having such a remarkable dinner, and since we were all so rested, we headed off to find the best Christmas lights displays and we had a great time.

To sum it all up, Santa did not disappoint anyone, the pecan harvest of 2008 is over, we rediscovered a pancake place and we were together. We played, laughed and just enjoyed being together for a special Christmas.

Today, Granny and Grandfather (my mom and dad) met us part of the way for lunch and we picked our A up. We are glad she is home and we are all together again! We missed her smiling face.

To Be Continued...

Christmas 2008 ~ Part One

We came back from our holiday at the cabin on Monday and I have been out of sorts ever since. Maybe it is the whole getting ready for the holidays and it being over so fast and onto the 2009 thing or more likely because our A did not come home with us.

She went to spend a grand ole time with family. The three-day church camp thing was her first time away last summer and they asked her to stay a whole week. I miss her terribly but I know she is having a great visit.

Here she is leaving...

I have so much to post and many pics to share I am going to have to have a three-part Christmas walk down memory lane.

I had to include the trip to see Santa picture. Even waiting in line, there were smiles and laughter .... at least that first hour.

We did bring home the "official" over-priced shot the elves took with their camera but I liked this one with ours better.

We spent Christmas Eve with family. We ate, there were presents and it was fun. Christmas Eve excitement is unmatched any other time of the year.

We kept them in present-suspense a little longer for some more photos.

A and cousin E very carefully made a stuffed bear. It obviously took a team effort.

Cousin A is a college student and all but this was extremely cute catching her not skimping one bit from educational opportunities while on Christmas break from school.

W asked Santa for a new bike and getting his safety gear completely gave him hope he would have one Christmas morning. He was so attached to his safety gear he wanted to wear his helmet to bed. When he realized he couldn't lay his head down comfortably he gave in and let us take it off.

Here is a family picture on Christmas Eve 2008. They will totally love the photographic evidence of the moment ... maybe even enough to forgive me for posting it on the blog.

Not to leave MK out of a little feature ... here she is with chocolate on her face. We love her enough to clean her face but it was Christmas Eve and with all the excitement we missed it!

To Be Continued....

A Thanksgiving to Remember

I had to post about Thanksgiving before Christmas but this is cutting it close!

We drove to south Louisiana to spend Thanksgiving with my sweet Mamaw. I have so many aunts, uncles and cousins, second cousins and third cousins on my mom's side of the family, I truly have lost count. My Mamaw had TWELVE children; six boys and six girls.

Here she is and she was thrilled to have family together for the holiday. I need to post about how special she is and what an amazing honor it is to be her granddaughter.

Below is a picture of W waiting for all the food to be arranged so he could EAT. The girls happily obliged my photo op.

Here are three boy cousins looking for some boy things to do.

Oh look, same boys having having no problem having fun in the girly princess castle bounce house. A bounce house at Thanksgiving, you ask? Oh my yes, that is how we roll.

W and I at the end of a great Thanksgiving Day!

Here is MK loving on her great-Mamaw!

Two cousins getting together after a whole YEAR!
Our children love to ride on the luggage cart and here they are ready to roll.

The hotel had a little putt-putt golf course and they had a chance to play before we left.

This was too sweet not to include.

On our way home, we stopped as we crossed into Mississippi and had lunch with family that was not far behind us.

Cousins getting ready to say good-bye!

We have some wonderful Thanksgiving holiday memories.

Optimistic

I am such an optimist... waking up every day of my nine-day illness proclaiming it to be the day I would be well. My little blog has suffered again. In the list of priorities I guess it knows where it lies but I am hopeful and definitely optimistic that I will post more often. I have decided to do a year in review before year's end and hopefully hallmark the big events of 2008 on the blog.

There were a couple of notes I wanted to make about one morning this past week that I wanted to chronicle before it seeped into the recesses of my mind to never be uncovered again like so many others have.

I was rushing around one morning getting things ready for a monthly meeting at church. I had baked some breakfast for the meeting, organized all my notes and supplies for the meeting, fed the children and everyone was in various stages of getting ready. I am so grateful that A has become so self-sufficient at getting ready to go somewhere and can help others occasionally. W is always first ... he is the easiest. While MK ate her breakfast, I ducked back into my closet to change clothes.

As I perused the options I settled on an outfit while debating in my mind things like... I think I wore those pants to the last meeting, but not these pants.... and it is really cold... what about something warmer like a sweater but did I wear this to the last meeting a MONTH ago when it was cold? I decided I had no more time to have the debate with myself and picked something.

Sweet W was in the hall when I was hurrying by and I thought I would see if my SIX-year-old BOY would remember what I wore to the last meeting a MONTH ago. So I went for it, "W, do you remember if this is the same thing that I wore to the last meeting? I know not the pants, but the top?" He looked at me and said, "You are just beautiful." There it was. I could have cared less if I wore it a month ago or every day since. He made me feel special, made my day and showed his love. I hugged him and told him he made me feel special. He said, "I know."

I headed to the kitchen and was rushing MK to finish her breakfast so she could get dressed and she announced she was done. YEA! I said let's go get you ready and rushed to the bathroom with her trailing behind me. I told her I had her things laid out and all she had to do was put them on before her hair and teeth and then she says "Mommy, you are my hero!" I stopped in my tracks again...

There you have it. Two special moments I do not want to forget. I have so many and I want to write them all down but if I do not I will have to hold fast to the fact that I was busy living the life and soaking it up even if it lands in the recesses of my mind. It is all good and I am blessed.

Last Week In Review!

I have wanted to post about some of our activities lately but they have kept us too busy and then I came down with a cold or something. I ended up taking sudafed to help me breathe and sleep the last two nights and that leaves me with medicine-head. The upside, I am completely rested even if it was medication induced. So today my head is still clearing and I am behind on all the posts I thought of writing and pictures that needed posting.

About last week, before the plague, we had a lot going on besides the usual. There was a library trip for more references for A's research paper, pajama shopping for Pajama Night for two, some Christmas shopping, hemming Star Wars pajamas that were too long, Christmas parties for two classes, cookie donations for the homeless and the grand finale was taking the children to see The Nutcracker Ballet and Symphony.

I was going to video them telling us their absolutely favorite parts of the Nutcracker but I have not completed training in getting the video from camera to computer (with VOICES heard) and then to the blog. Not to worry, I am not giving up... my tech person said he would work it into his schedule soon.

I still plan to have a Thanksgiving post complete with pictures of that festive holiday so there is something to look forward to!