Hear God’s heart cry for you to spend time with Him.
Stuffed Animals Show Up in Strange Places
I walk into the bathroom and what do I see?
I made my first loaf of homemade bread ever! It turned out great. We all ate a whole loaf in no time flat. I actually made two loaves. It’s a good thing because I wouldn’t have been able to take a picture of it. I was too slow with my camera.
Christmas: Joy Comes in the Morning
Kelsey and I worked together to create a Christmas ambiance on Christmas Eve. The sights, the sounds, the smells – we turned off the lights and lit our cinnamon and apple pie-scented candles, turned on the Christmas tree lights, played the Charlie Brown Christmas CD and kept everything calm and peaceful.
We even enjoyed the aroma of fresh bread. I baked my first homemade dinner rolls on Christmas Eve. They were delicious!
Kim’s Etsy store is here.
Kelsey has learned some Christmas songs on the keyboard, so she played them and I sang them with her. Then we sang several Christmas hymns, all having the theme of Jesus our Savior being born in a manger in Bethlehem and the angels singing and Salvation coming to the world through Him.
Then came CHRISTMAS MORNING!
Garrett Makes a Play-do Movie Theater from Penney Douglas on Vimeo.
Garrett Finishing up with Play-Do from Penney Douglas on Vimeo.
Little Birthday Party for the Littles
We’re all gathered, anxiously awaiting the blowing out of the candles. Emma gets to go first since she’s the youngest and will probably scream if we let anybody else go first.
We’re singing so sweetly. Can you tell?
Emma climbs up on the table to blow out her candles.
Now it’s Garrett’s turn.
It looks like Morgan helped him blow out his candles.
Now we’re opening presents. We use Christmas wrapping paper for these birthdays. Can you blame us? Five birthdays occur between Dec. 31 and Jan. 10. What other wrapping paper would you expect us to use?
Little Birthday Party for the Littles from Penney Douglas on Vimeo.
And, finally, Fiona gets her turn to blow out the candles. Her cake was the last to get done. Three cakes is a lot to bake in one day. Especially when I just decided in the middle of the day that we were going to go ahead and have the birthday party that night! That’s after taking Nelson to the airport and little ones shopping for presents and returning the rental car. That was one full day. Fortunately, Katie made the strawberry cake. I only had to bake two cakes. I never used to make cakes at all, because I don’t like cake. But I found some cakes that are worth the eating, and now I’m pretty good at making them.
Did I say I don’t like cake? Well, I like my cakes. We have three different cakes that the kids choose between for their birthdays. Strawberry 7-Up cake, lemon cake that’s a special recipe from a former co-worker of Gary’s, or chocolate pudding cake. They are all moist and yummy! So for this birthday, we had all three kinds. And, of course, I had to try them all to make sure they were good. 🙂
Sometimes I let them choose an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. Those are pretty scrumpdillyicious, too. But we don’t usually get those for the January birthdays.
Another Sign that Christmas is Coming
IT’S SNOWING!
We’re having a white Christmas. Kelsey was dreaming of a white Christmas. And her dream has come true.
We’ve had a nice homey, family Christmas atmosphere in our house. It may not be Christmas anywhere else, but it is here!
This house has so many nice elements that make it cozy and homey. The gas fireplace is a big one. I love looking over and seeing the fire burning in the fireplace. It just makes me feel good and warm and secure.
And the windows are so big and beautiful and let us see the outside while we’re warm and comfy inside.
And now we have snow! It snowed quite a bit one day last week, and the kids went out and threw snowballs at each other.
But today the snow was really good packing snow, and there was lots of it. It snowed almost all day. So they went out and built snowmen.
Each snowman had its own unique personality.
Kelsey and Morgan named this guy Johnson.
I thought Anna’s looked like Cleopatra.
Fiona’s looked a little bit like her.
Fiona got in some photography practice using the adorable Abby as her subject.
"Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no other's hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller
