Christmas Season

It is Christmas time again this year. What a great time to think about the sacrifice that God has provided for our sins with His Son! How can we be anything except thankful and humble at the thought of that. And yet, we go about carelessly sinning and taking for granted the grace and mercy that God bestows on each and every one of His adopted children.

Especially this time of year, the focus should be on the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of Christ and the ransom He paid for our sins and how WONDERFUL that gift is. Despite the fact that we have received the most wonderful gift in the world, and on a daily (minute by minute some days), receive continued forgiveness and grace from God for the numerous sins we still commit...... yet we still have wants and desires that we think NEED to be met at Christmas. How could we want for more? Except maybe to share the truth of God's saving grace to others?

So when you think about what your most fond Christmas memory is.... do you ever question the reason it is the most fond memory? Does it have anything to do with Christ? or just the commercial / material Xmas that the seems to dominate our thoughts this time of year?

My most fond memory as a child was at my Grama Pollard's house on Christmas Eve (we used to always be at her house on Christmas Eve evening). Nearly the entire family was there. I remember reading the story of the birth of Jesus from Luke (pretty sure my Aunt Melissa read it this year) and then someone started up some music and we all began dancing (jitterbug, square dancing, twist, we did it all). :) It isn't very often that so much laughter errupts from the house when the entire family is present, but it did that Christmas Eve. It was a FANTASTIC memory, and I don't have any idea what I got for a present that year.

That is the type of memory I hope to pass along to my daughter. Pray with me that we can change and take the commercialism "X" out of Xmas and put Christ back into Christmas.

Motherhood

I have to say that I love being a Mom. It is a hard job, but the rewards that I get are priceless. To see the lessons that I am teaching my darling daughter actually sink in. The lessons that come to mind that I have witnessed lil E understanding and using in conversation are:

• God created everything


• Memorizing scripture
  
• Happiness is a choice -- choose it.
  
• Cats can't talk (she said this after I asked our cat a question)
  
• It is better to share even when other kids take the toys you had first

I know she is not a prodigy or even much different than other kids her same age, but she is the example I have to witness on a daily basis and I am so thankful to God for this opportunity.

She is already starting to read and I think this is an amazing process. It is great to hear her read outloud signs, cereal boxes, mail and products we see at the store. Although today, as we were passing through the feminine hygiene department, I was glad she didn't use that opportunity to read outloud any words. lol!

Here are a couple of pics we took this past week. One is of lil E when she kept her jammies on all day long. After her bath that night, she was confused why she was putting different jammies on again....and not clothes. Confused, but happy! :)

And this is one of the two of us on the couch watching her favorite letter show (Wheel of Fortune).

And here she is dancing to one of her new favorite songs, Waves of Mercy. She is doing the motions they taught her at church. :) Here are the words to the chorus in case you can't hear it very well:

Waves of mercy, waves of grace
Everywhere I look I see Your face
Your love has captured me
Oh my God, this love, How can it be?

Halloween

We had such a great time at the Harvest party at our church. I love it that it takes the focus away from the "dark spiritual" part of Halloween and emphasizes the fun, games and of course candy that the kiddos truly love. Here are some pictures of our darling daughter (cowgirl) and a short video of her practicing saying "Yee-haw".

She ended up begging me to clean the "freckles" off before we got to church and ditched the hat about 10 minutes after we got there..... so, she didn't really appear to be dressed up at all. But we still had fun.

Her favorite parts about the evening were probably the 15 minutes she got to jump in the bounce house alone (unheard of) and then on the ride home with Daddy, she got to try a starburst candy (which he said she LOVED). :)

Here is the video of the "practice yee-haw"....

Here she is with our pumpkin that she refused to help me carve. She totally turned down putting her hand into the pumpkin and I had to insist that she pick up a seed that flipped out onto the floor to help me pick up. She said she didn't want to touch it because it had pumpkin juice on it. She didn't have any issues helping me eat the seeds once they were roasted.....