First weeks of Christmas

Well since the kids are napping/ resting, and I'm on a blogging roll, I'll go ahead and start a post about our first few weeks of Christmas.  Christmas, especially with children now, is one of the most anticipated times of the year, and rightly so I believe.  Every morning since Thanksgiving Madeline will ask how many days left until Christmas.  And as we seek to fill this special season with lots of things to create fun memories that "build up" to that glorious Christmas morning, our hope even more is to plant in our children's hearts an anticipation for the coming Christ.  So we've picked out and decorated our tree, made lots of Christmas cookies, watched lots of Christmas movies, hosted and gone to parties, gone shopping to pick out the "perfect presents" for everyone on our list, wrapped gifts, hung stockings, and sung every Christmas song imaginable (right now Maddie is singing at the top of her lungs a mix of "Angels we Have Heard on High" and "frosty the snowman" during rest time), I hope that they will look back to this Christmas and have so many fun memories.  But really my favorite times during the season have been teaching the kids those age old beautiful Advent and Christmas hymns about the anticipation and coming of Christ, and reading to them stories from the Bible that build up and point to his birth.  I hope as they grow, and Lord willing, God works in their hearts, these precious truths will become the MOST precious things about Christmas to them.  As I was thinking these past few days about how special and joyful this Christmas has been for our little family combined with my sorrow and grief for the families experiencing the horrible tragedy in Newtown, CO I've been greatly reminded that the anticipation of Christ didn't stop with his birth in Bethlehem.  As believers, living in a depraved and sinful world that is not our home, we have the Great anticipation of Christ's second and final return where he will make all things new, and right, and beautiful!  Come, again, Lord Jesus!!!!!  Merry Christmas!

 I haven't been great about taking as many pictures lately, but here are some highlights.

Some of our sweet friends the Philpots got to visit from TX,
 and how glad we all were to spend time with them!

A little party at a friends house
 trying to get all the kids to look

That's more like it

A fun dress my mom saved from when I
was a girl and Maddie "posing" for a pic

Watching Rudolph

And drinking hot chocolate

He could sit all day and play with the
train around the Christmas tree

Opening ornaments on our annual "Ornament Day"

Gloria got a "baby" ornament... and you can see why.
 She rarely is without a baby doll in her arms these days.

Rivers got a Madagascar 3 ornament for a few reasons.
It has a lion, one of his favorite animals, balls,
and that's what we went to see for his 3rd birthday

Madeline got an ornament
 commemorating her first year of school