CHRISTmas

Christmas has always been a much-anticipated time of the year for me. I love the lights, the trees, the decorations, the gifts. I love spending time with my family, lounging around in my housepants and taking time off from the usual busyness of life to reflect on what really matters.

But Christmas isn't about lights, gifts or housepants. It's about a little baby. A precious, pure, and perfect little Child sent from Heaven above to redeem all of mankind from it's own sinfulness. It's about the Child, who would grow up to be a Man.....a Man who would willingly lay down on the cross and allow Himself to be crucified to pay for our sin. Because He knew we couldn't pay for it ourselves.

In a word...Amazing. Thank you Jesus for loving me so much that You would die for me. Thank you, Father, for sending Your Son to earth to redeem me....to offer me the gift of grace. Without Your love, without Your grace, without Your Gift, life is meaningless.

Praise the Name of Jesus. Praise the Name of Jesus. He's my Rock. He's my Fortress. He's my Deliverer, in Him will I trust. Praise the Name of Jesus.

And thank you Father, for bringing Joseph home to us safely. What a great Christmas this has been!!

Not a day of rest.....that's for sure

Whoever said that Sunday is designed as a day of rest, hasn't been in our house too much. I love my Sundays. I love worshipping with my friends and family in church and I love coming home and spending a good part of the afternoon chilling out with my children. Today was a very different, but just as wonderful a Sunday as I've ever spent.

This morning, my Ensemble had the chance to lead in worship. After church, we headed to McAlister's for lunch, then home to change clothes. We were at the house for all of an hour before heading south to attend the Karate Extravaganza. All of the karate students, if they have attended the classes and know their material, graduate to their next belt every three months. And once a year, in December, the graduation is the big extravaganza at a local high school. Everyone looks forward to it because all of the students from all three schools are together, the instructors get to show off their moves, and the students that earned their black belts and are continuing on in advanced training get their swords. My boys all earned their black belts this year and are continuing in the Masters program.....so they got their swords today and they were so excited.

They also got to perform their demos for the entire crowd, which is always a thrill.

I figured I'd get in a picture to since I'm the one that has carted them to karate hundreds of times....I'm the one who has washed these uniforms hundreds of times.....I'm the one who always seems to know where the belts are that the kids have misplaced. Jiminy Christmas...I should get a black belt for all the work I've done these last 4 1/2 years.




After graduation, we raced back home (I forgot Daniel's pants), then headed to church. It was the Middle School and High School Choirs turn to lead in Worship and it was fantastic.

I'm so proud of my kids. They have worked hard these last 4+ years and now they have their sword and their black belt to show for it.

Tuition---payable over 6 years: $13,000.
Three different uniforms for four kids: $500.
Nunchakus, Bo staffs, kamas, and escrima sticks for four kids: $325.

Being the mom of three black belts and one first brown belt: PRICELESS!!!!

Happy Birthday times three!!

The last 24 hours have been an incredibly busy time. Having three children born between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a dynamic all its own. Throw in Christmas programs, parties, end of year concerts, graduations, and recitals from various extracurriculars......and you have a completely different kind of animal.

As a result, celebrating birthdays ends up being almost an afterthought....a time shoehorned in amongst all of the other things we do. This weekend has been deemed Birthday Celebration Weekend. Last night, Daniel and Trey each had some friends over for a sleepover....which ended up being a big lie, because no sleeping was actually done. Trey's birthday was two weeks ago.....Daniel's is next week. Today is Julia's birthday and she wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese's for her family dinner. Ugh!

Double Ugh!!

But we survived it. We are all exhausted and so looking forward to bedtime, which will be very shortly.

Tomorrow is another crazily busy Sunday......but more on that later.

Here are a couple of funny pictures of the party animals.

Trey, Joshua, Jordan and Cory---at 6 am.

This is Justin----I guess that XBOX game wasn't quite exciting enough to keep him awake.

And tonight, after dinner with Chuck E, Daniel came home and literally passed out on his bed. I just left him there. Hopefully, he'll get a good night's sleep. He's going to need it for tomorrow.

The Family Notebook

For the last several weeks....months almost....Trey has been working on this project. He asked me for information on my and Joe's parents; he asked for our three favorite family recipes; he began writing sentences about Joe and me and about Daniel. I knew he was putting these things together for something for school, but I didn't know what the end result would be. Today, he came home with the finished product and it is beautiful.

What struck me more than anything else was his creation of a Family Crest. This is how he described it:

My family crest has a lot of symbols that mean a lot of things. I put a cross on the crest because of our Christianity and the church. There are music notes on there because I've taken piano lessons for four straight years. Everyone in my family is in the choir except for my dad. I put a little bit of white on the crest because of our very pure family. The yellow on the cross stands for intellect. We have a very smart and united family. The family crest tells over 1,000 things about our family.

I could only smile as I read this. As a mom of four very opinionated, stubborn, willful, bright, amazing children, I see a lot of things. I see Daniel---our quiet, easygoing, nonplussed eldest child. Very little rattles him. I see Trey---our instigating, talented wonder of a second son. He believes he can accomplish just about anything. I see Joshua---our often misunderstood, most sentimental and physically loving child. He is our most strong-willed and the most difficult to parent. He is the one who could do just about anything if he only believed he could. I see Julia---our princess. Our sassy diva of an only daughter, who has the world by the tail and most everyone wrapped around her little finger. I see my two middle children arguing with each other more than with anyone else. I see my oldest block the world out as he reads his extra time away. I see my little girl wishing she had more little girls to play with her.

I think---How I wish I could do a better job. I say to myself---If only I'd done that differently. But as I read Trey's description of our family crest, I can only thank the Lord for four children who bring me more joy than I could have ever imagined. Where I feel frustration about the children arguing, Trey sees a family united. Where I see the mistakes I've made, Trey sees purity. When I think I'm forcing Trey to play piano, he includes music notes. When I wonder if my kids will have the same kind of love for my Lord that I do, Trey includes a cross.

Thank you, Father for this reminder to view life through the eyes of my children.

"I got hit in the head with a tooth."

Today has been a day!!! It began at the orthodontist where Trey got his braces off. He looks great and now he gets to wear a retainer for awhile. (Here's to hoping we don't have to dig through trash cans like we did with Daniel and his retainer.....twice)

After I dropped Trey off at school, I headed to Michaels to try and use the 40% coupon that came in the mail. As I'm trying to find a metallic gold three-wick candle (to no avail, by the way), my phone rings. It's the nurse from the school and she has Josh with her. All I heard were the words tooth, blood, suture and that he was in good humor. By the end of the conversation, I understood what had happened. Josh was in P.E. and they were playing a game of flag tag, where each child wears a flag and everyone else tries to take it from them. As Josh was reaching for Rachel's flag, she turned.....and her front tooth embedded into Josh's forehead. Thankfully, the tooth stayed attached to Rachel, but Josh ended up with a pretty decent gap in his face.

Of course the nurse and I had a chuckle at Josh's expense.....I mean, if he was going to be felled by a girl, hopefully she was cute!!! She's a redhead...I've seen her and she is cute.

I finished up at Michael's and went to pick up Josh. The nurse was right....he was in good humor, he looked like he was fine and I questioned, silently, why I was checking him out of school. I called the doctor but they couldn't see him until 2:00, so since I was already out running errands, I told Josh he could tag along. We ate at Moe's, then continued to try and find that elusive metallic gold three-wick candle. No such luck and by the fourth store, he had had enough, so I took him home for a bit of Game Cube time.

He didn't have a headache and his head only hurt when he scrunched his forehead up, so again, I didn't think the doc would do anything. He would probably have a decent scar, but otherwise would be fine. When the doctor came in and starting asking questions, we both learned from Josh that the nurse hadn't put anything on his gash.....no peroxide, no alcohol. According to Josh she told him to get a dry paper towel and hold it against his head to stop the bleeding.

Alrighty then.......maybe school nurses aren't allowed to put antiseptic on wounds. I don't know, but that seemed a little odd to me. So, because the human mouth is so very nasty inside, the doctor had to commence with cleaning out Josh's wound. And Josh did not appreciate this at all. He didn't cry but he was clearly uncomfortable. After several minutes, the doctor decided that in order to minimize the scarring, Josh would need some stitches.

Let me put it this way.....I only thought the yelps coming from this strapping black belt during his wound cleaning were bad. The mini-screams when the doctor injected the lidocaine were quite impressive, but once the good stuff kicked in, he was good to go. He took his stitches like a champ and is now quite proud of them. He told me he couldn't wait to get to school to show them off.

The afternoon ended with Josh's teacher calling the house to see how he was doing, which I thought was a very nice thing to do.

December 7.....this day will live in infamy for a lot of reasons.

And I wonder why I'm tired all the time..........

P.S. Happy Birthday, Jill

P.P.S. Please forgive the continuous wordage of this blog entry. I've tried several times to separate the paragraphs, but the blogger won't allow it.