And Christmas is OVER!

That is right - the tree is down, everything is dusted, the floor is swept and Christmas 2011 is in the history books.  But, before we leave it altogether (and head out for a New Year's Eve party), let's look at some of the highlights.

Always, always, the Twin City Educators' Mom Christmas Party is a night to be remembered.

Everyone has eaten their fill of appetizers and desserts, and now we are gathering 'round for the gift exchange.

Now, our gift exchange is not a simple choosing of names, or matching numbers.  No, we steal.  We plot. We strategize.  All this, for gifts that are still wrapped.  That's right, we are stealing packages, and we don't have any idea of what is inside.  So what do we do?

We shake.

And listen, hefting the weight back and forth.

Look at that, Suzy is shaking her own gift, just to throw us off.  Clever, clever girl.

When we are done, everyone opens theirs one at a time.

Here is mine - I love it!

Thanks, Kris - you did good!  This is something I will treasure forever.

So now, off to prepare to ring in the new year.  The guys are all in back doing some target practice with rifles and pistols.  I already had my turn, you may see pictures of that, you may not! 

Family Christmas pictures will be up as soon as I get them all cropped/cleaned.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Plans, Christmas Plans!

So far, this year has been an awfully easy Christmas season.  If I were a superstitious person, I'd be expecting the other shoe to drop, but I am not, so I think I will just be happy!

I am very blessed to have a very flexible family.  I know so many who have stress upon stress because Mom MUST have the dinner on Christmas Eve and mother-in-law MUST have everyone at her house to Christmas dinner, everyone MUST buy gifts for each other.

Blech.

My mother-in-law has three daughter-in-laws.  I think being the mother of all boys makes you flexible (if not insane, but that is another post, based on my own experience with my four boys!).  Anyway, she has us all over the weekend before Christmas, on whatever day works best for everyone.  We do gifts for the kids, but the grownups just do small things - I bake breads and cookies, one always gives everyone coffee, the other does a craft and some little Italian cookies.  My in-laws give us money.  I like them a lot! 

Christmas Eve we are going to church, then I am not sure what the night holds.  There is talk of getting hot chocolate and fancy coffee or eggnog and driving around looking at lights.  When we get home we will have appetizers instead of dinner (smoked sausage, cheese, crackers, shrimp cocktail, good stuff!).  Last year we got on Gospel for Asia's site and bought gifts for missionaries.  I think we will do something like that again this year. 

We are also going to do something very different - we are going to open presents Christmas Eve.  We have church on Sunday, but only the service, not Sunday School.  So we will open gifts Saturday, then we can sleep in and have a big breakfast Sunday, and head up to worship.  After church, home to fix dinner and my mom and stepfather come over and enjoy a meal with us, then open a few more gifts together. 

My mother has also gotten very flexible, as we now do Christmas Day instead of Christmas Eve together, and it is at my house, not hers.  My entire life, Christmas Eve was with Mom's family.  Out with the old, in with the new!

So, we have attended some parties, the Christmas band concert is over, the big family gathering is just a memory, everything is bought and wrapped and I even have all the food in the house.  All that is left is to enjoy - to take this time and relax.  To be able to breathe, and to think of Christ, the blessing of our salvation, and this blessed Christmas time.

And now, for something a little different

This year we decided to do something a little different for Christmas.  Usually Nevin takes the boys out one at a time to buy gifts for each other and me, and I take the boys out (en masse) to buy gifts for Nevin.  This has worked well for a few years, but we still find ourselves with a lot of gifts that are nice, but really, we don't need. 

Actually, we don't NEED anything.  We have more than everything we need - and we have pretty much everything we could possibly want as well. 

But there are so many in the world who don't even have clean water, a way to support themselves, or even a Bible.  So this year, we cut back quite a bit.  We asked each boy what one thing they would really like.  We got them each that one thing, and then we picked out a smaller item as well, and another small gift and some candy for the stocking.  We did not buy anything for each other (okay, Nevin did get me a box of chocolates, he knows the ways to keep me happy!).  The boys did not select anything for us or each other.

Instead, on Christmas Eve, we looked at the Christmas Catalog put out by Gospel for Asia.  Nevin checked into their ministry, and read the book Revolution in World Missions by K. P. Yohannan
 
(note - this is the book that has been handed out for free at The Greater St. Louis Homeschool Expo the last few years - and is available free at GFA's website).  One of the things that is different about this ministry is that the missionaries are not people sent to India from the United States or Europe - they are indigenous people, who have been discipled and trained to carry the gospel to their own countrymen.  They are also ministering to some of the poorest of the poor in the world.  Where $10 in our home will buy a small Lego set (that Ben can assemble in about 5 minutes), through Gospel for Asia it can buy a mosquito net, to protect a child from the biting insects that carry malaria.

With the kids, we looked all through the online catalog, and asked them what they would like to buy with their own money.  This is a new twist, also, because in the past they have "selected" gifts for the brothers and parents, which we then paid for.  This time, they were using their own money.  They kicked in $10-11 each ( the equivalent of two weeks' allowance for Tony and Ben, but 10 weeks' for Joe and Henry).  Nevin and I also put in what we would have spent on each other.  Together, for relatively little money, our family bought a pair of chicks, a pair of rabbits, a mosquito net, gospel tracts, VBS materials, a tool kit and a bicycle for a missionary.  Life-changing things for these people, with money that would have gone for nice, but unneccessary, items for ourselves.

This is not to toot our own horn, by the way - I want to share this because it was so easy, and yet so worthwhile.  So often we look for ways to help, ways to support missions (if you don't go yourself, you need to support those who do), we have a desire to do "something", but that "something" can be elusive.  This was something that anyone can do - it is a good start. 

Nevin and I have been reading Radical by David Platt, and it is really giving us pause, and causing us to re-think what is important.  What is enough.

What is too much.

But more on that later.  For now, Merry Christmas.  The traditional pictures of our over-indulged children will be posted tomorrow.  For today, we will bask in the glow of the day, prepare a Taco Fiesta for dinner, and a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting to celebrate the birth of Christ.