Category Archives: Christmas

A Little Bit of Christmas

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Around these parts we are  getting ready for Christmas.

But I must make a confession. 

I don’t love Christmas.

Now all you die-hard Christmas people can run me out of town with pitch forks.

I envy people who can get into the spirit of Christmas and who revel in all the preparations for the big day.  There are a lot of aspects of Christmas that I do enjoy, however the parts that I don’t like seem to overshadow that good parts.  My annoyance with Christmas starts the day after Thanksgiving, with black Friday.  To me black Friday is consumerism at its very worse, people sitting in lines for hours to get the best deal on the latest junk. Anyway, I know a lot of people really like the hunt, but I just can’t stand it.  This summer my irritation with Christmas was brought to a head when my own children started to tell me what Santa was going to bring to them. Not only was I irritated at their attitude, I was irritated by what I had created!  Dadzoo and I started talking, we wanted to make Christmas more Christ focused in our home, but how does one do that when we are so entrenched in the worlds view of this Holy holiday.

 (Dadzoo reading the “Giving Tree” before we decorated our Christmas tree)

Our thoughts and discussions kept coming back to the idea that we need to pare down and refocus on the love of Christ and the miracle of His birth and life.  Christmas needs to be less about what Santa is going to do and more about what WE are doing for others, using Christ as our example of love, charity and service.

 (punk #5 in his new favorite spot)

This doesn’t mean we are giving up Santa all together, we are just letting the myth take more of a back seat.  My children are getting some well thought out, Christ centered gifts, from their Father and I, instead of a ton of toys from Santa.  Our children used some of their own spending money and donated it to charities that use the money to help people in our own neighborhood with things like utility bills and groceries.  Our children are not exchanging gifts, but service to each other.

I am excited about these changes, even though they are small I can feel the change in our home.  I can also feel the change in my attitude about Christmas, this very holy holiday.  Dadzoo and I are going to be praying and thinking over Christmas, and how our family celebrates it, over the next several years and make changes so that our home becomes on that is centered in Christ, not only everyday, but especially at Christmas time.

(Our “service ornaments” more in another post)

What do you and your family do to invite Christ into your homes during Christmas?

Christmas traditions

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I had a friend e-mail me this morning and I thought I would pass part of the e-mail off to you.

“Anyway, if you don’t mind sharing….. I was wondering how your family celebrates Christmas? Do you make gifts? Buy gifts? Only give a certain number? Do something rather than get something? It is very interesting to hear from other people what they do….”

So what do you do?

On to other business, I am sorry I have been a lazy blogger lately, but I have a few posts up my sleeves including pictures from Thanksgiving…..stay tuned!

Neighbor Gifts

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I love neighbor gifts

I love everything about them

I love planning for them, and making them, and giving them and getting them and eating them!

I love going to the door and wishing all my neighbors a Merry Christmas, and nothing is more fun than opening up the door to find happy faces and a plate full of goodies.

I love neighbors gifts

(have I said that already?)

This morning we woke up to this:


It was a surprise, there wasn’t any snow in the forecast. By the time it was all finished we got about 6 inches of wonderful white snow.

This is the left overs of the storm that closed the Las Vegas airport and all the schools.

Babies!

It decided to make its presence known in northern Utah, and us Utahans, we just go about our business. It takes about 18 inches to close our schools. (I am sure those in the north east are saying “18 inches??? Babies!”)


Just because all the schools and roads were “open” doesn’t mean that I felt safe driving around today. I live at the top of a hill, and my city isn’t known for getting that hill plowed and salted promptly. I have on a few occasions slid to the very bottom (scary) and spun my tires all the way to the top (scary and annoying). So I decided to clear my calendar (ahem) and stay in for the day. Since I was now free I dived into my neighbor gift making project.

The gift for this year, fresh bread and homemade raspberry jam in super cute bottles.

I made the jam back in September, so all that was left was the bread and some cute tags.
I decided to make braided Challah bread glazed with honey, it is so pretty and yummy!

Voila
Neighbor gifts
Merry Christmas!

The Christmas wish list part II

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After posting Punk #1’s hilarious and strange Christmas wish list I thought I should do some explaining. My little daughter is a Geologist, or at least a Geologist in training (good guess Mr. Jeanette). After school she loves to go up in the hill behind our house and collect rocks. Then she brings them to the back step and does this:


For hours and hours she sits there and breaks apart those rocks with a hammer. She knows which rock have little crystals in them and which rocks break apart easily along lines.

She is our little Geologist.

Last Saturday Dadzoo took her to Home Depo, he needed some paint for a project. She came home with these:

Her very own hammer and protective eye gear. She is so excited, Dadzoo will no longer worry about her losing his hammer and Momzoo won’t worry about flying rocks hitting her eyes.

It was a win-win purchase.

So when she gave me her rather unusual Christmas list I wasn’t very surprised (this coming from a girl who wanted to be a Pickle for Halloween when she was three) and she gave me detailed reasons behind every item.

In case you all were wondering here is her list and reasoning:

A bottle of vinegar: to test rocks, you can tell different types of rock by how they react with certain chemicals, and since she is 9 she is limited to vinegar. She once used a whole gallon on a Saturday afternoon.
Tweezers: So she can easily pick up small sparkly rocks.
A box of baggies: To keep her collections of favorite rocks, since she had been baned from using mine. You have no idea how fast she can go through a box of 500 baggies.
A box of garbage sacks: So she can break-up her rocks on top of this, for easy clean up.
Work gloves: To protect her hands of coarse.

Some small jars: For her very favorite and smallest specimens.
A tool belt: To hold the hammer, eye glasses and other various tools, especially beneficial when working in the field.
Rock tumbler & Rock polishing kit: A necessary tool in any aspiring Geologist collection.


That’s my girl!