Tree Lighting

Tonight was a very special night for our family and we loved getting to share it with my sister and her kids for the first time!!! Tonight was the annual lighting of the Christmas Tree in our town square. Ryan and I have been attending this event ever since we moved to the town of Greencastle. I remember being there three years ago when I was pregnant with Christian. It was especially fun to share it with him this year.
Our town gathers together in the square the Friday before each Thanksgiving. We sing Christmas carols, drink hot chocolate, eat popcorn (although we didn't get any this year) and all the children are given a jingle bell. At 7:30pm everyone rings their bell and the lights on the tree are lit! It's beautiful every year! One of my favorite things about our small town is it's lack of political correctness. It brings me such joy to stand with several hundred other people and sing about the birth of Jesus.
Our friends from Left to Right: Carter, Anessa, Emma, Abby, Nate & Christian.
Angie, Judy and Mandy. This is a rare picture, we're usually the ones taking the pictures!
Nate was all bundled up and was wondering what was going on!
Abby and Kate are great friends. They had a great time running around after each other.
Anessa, Emma and Ellie all go to the same school. Anessa and Emma are in Sunday school together and they go to Good News Club together! These three had a great time throwing leaves at each other.
Christian checking out his jingle bell. The mittens didn't stay on for long...he found them to be a little too frustrating.
Ellie and Emma!

After the tree lighting we went to our friends the Furnish's house! We ate too much yummy food, including pumpkin cheesecake (to die for) and Angie's pizza dip! Left to Right: Brian, Devon and Taryn. Taryn is a great babysitter!
Christian entertaining us with some music!

The girls had a great time with all the dress-up clothes. This picture shows just one of at least seven outfits Emma had on through out the evening.
Don't you just love a 15 year old who has enough humility to play with a two year old? Devon is such a great guy and a great sport when it comes to playing with Christian. Christian loves to play doctor. He was even listening to Reagan's (the dog) heart, although I didn't get a picture of it.
What a special start to a great holiday season! Traditions like the tree lighting are what make great memories and we loved sharing it with our dear friends the Houpts, Furnishs and Marshalls.

You've gotta get this toy!

We have a "no touch" fancy nativity set that everyone is allowed to LOOK at, but we also have the FisherPrice Nativity and it is the perfect Christmas toy. I figured that if we have books and toys about Santa, we really need to have books and toys about Jesus. Thanks to my dear friend Heidi McNair, Christian got this for his first Christmas. He was only 6 months old and he put it in his mouth, but this year he's really getting it (if you ignore the cow on the roof of the stable). He now knows who Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus are. He loves to make Jesus go night-nights and he even sings to him. It's so sweet and you know I think it probably is a blessing to the real Jesus!

It's beginning to look a lot like....CHRISTMAS

I know, I know it's so early to be decorating for Christmas, but we're doing it anyway. Just for the record, we've never decorated this early before but since we do a "fake" tree we can do it earlier and this year I'm just needing to get it done. I'll blame it on the fact that I'm pregnant and feel like I have so much to get done before this baby comes and Christmas is one thing I can get started on now. I can't really get the baby's room ready until right before the baby comes because Nathan has claimed her crib and I don't want to kick him out until it's necessary (which might be after she arrives...she can be in a bassinett for awhile). Another reason we're getting ready a little bit early is because we have something to do every weekend from now until Christmas. I love a busy Christmas season, but this is stressing me out slightly. So this weekend, Ryan, Christian and I started to work on the tree. Christian loved the lights and the star on top. He was convinced that we were going to cover it with balls and trains. Unfortunately, we only have one train ornament and it's breakable, so it's not that fun for him. We might need to remedy that.

When Abby and Nate arrived this morning we had a tree with lights, but no ornaments. The three kids quickly helped me fill up one little spot on the tree.
The boys were really taking this project seriously!
Abby was trying to get the boys to organize their ornaments a little bit and not hang them all on the same branch. I assured her that the "girls" could fix it later.

One of my absolute favorite parts of Christmas is reading beautiful Christmas picture books. I have great memories of reading wonderful Christmas books from when I was little. When I used to teach I would choose a different picture book to read each day in December to my class. Needless to say, I have a lot of great Christmas books. Abby was thrilled to find this "princess" book in with all the Christmas books. She thought Mary was a princess. So we read the story and talked about how Mary was even more important than a princess! She got to take care of Baby Jesus.

I think this Christmas is going to be one of the best ones I've ever had. I love having a housefull of children to share in the joy with me. I love talking about Jesus' birthday. I love seeing the reflection of the tree lights in their little eyes. I love making crafts and baking cookies. I love looking through toy catalogs and hearing them "ooo" and "ahh" over all the great stuff. Emma is so sweet... Last week she went through a toy catalog and circled all the gifts she wanted to get for different kids in her class. It had never dawned on her that she wouldn't buy gifts for all her school friends. It probably would have cost about $5000.00 if I had bought everything she circled.

Get ready, I'm going to be posting a lot over the next month and a half!! We've got a lot of great activities planned!!

One of those days...UPDATED

Well, today has just been one of those days. And "yes" these are pictures of the kids vegetating in front of the TV. I'll give you a recap of our morning so far and you'll understand why I've just decided today can be a TV day! I'm sure all of you mommies can relate.
1. It's raining outside.
2. Christian has a fever (not sure why).
3. While trying to have "book time" on the couch with the three kids, Christian decided to pour my entire diet coke (that I had just opened) onto the living room carpet. Poor Nathan was so upset about this that even he started to tell me "sorry oody." Oody is how he says Judy...very cute.
4. Abby got tired of the boys so she locked herself in her room. She usually does this about once a day and usually I'm fine with it. She's the kind of kid who need alone time and usually she goes in her room and plays with her Polly Pockets. Well, not today. Today she took a nap....ahhh...that totally messes up nap time.
5. It's almost one o'clock and I'm still wearing my pjs. At least the kids are dressed.
6. A binkie ended up in the toilet.
7. When I mentioned to Abby that Christian wouldn't eat anything she suggested that I give him marshmallows as a snack. Of course he overheard this and decided that sounded good to him too...so all he's eaten all day is marshmallows. Very healthy!
8. Abby usually waits until the very last second to go potty. Therefore she never seems to have time to shut the door, so the boys usually end up joining her. Do you know what kind of problems this causes??? Toilet paper everywhere. I fight over who gets to flush. And then everyone wants to wash their hands and of course their hands aren't the only things that get wet.

So anyway, I hope our afternoon is totally uneventful. I did get one thing accomplished this morning. We have this very, very annoying Wiggles Guitar. It plays eight different songs, just incase the first three don't drive you crazy. I usually try to hide it under the couch or in a closet. Well, today I posted it to sell on Ebay! I decided it would be better appreciated in someone elses home who has a very patient mommy. I'll be happy if I even get a dollar for it!

It's about 5:30 and I thought I would give a little update. We had a good afternoon. Everyone took a small nap (including me-a rare treat). Amy ended up coming home early from work because I got a doctor's appointment for Christian and I didn't want to haul all four kids with me. Christian was great at the doctor, but is now on an antibiotic. He has a "booboo roat." Translation= A sore throat. It could be strep, but we didn't do the test. That would have been extremely traumatic, so he got the meds. because of the combination of symptoms; sore throat, runny nose, fever. Christian is the WORST at taking medicine and the doctor always wants to give him amoxicillin which you give three times a day for 10 days. It's always so terrible, so I finally got a doc. who would listen and the med. he's on is only 1 time a day for 5 days. YIPEE..the small joys of life.

Surprise visitor...

Sorry to keep everyone in suspense!! I was Emma's surprise visitor at lunch (Yup, only me!! That's probably a little anti-climatic). My friend Mandy watched the boys and Abby and I went to Emma's school for lunch. We also brought along Emma's friend Ellie who is in Kindergarten at Em's school. It was a great experience for Ellie to see how the whole lunch thing works (she is in half day kindergarten, so she doesn't eat lunch yet) and Abby loved it too. Abby finally got to meet Julia. Whenever Emma talks about her school friends Abby always wants to hear about Julia because she loves her name. I think Abby wishes she was named Julia. We all got Happy Meals from McDonalds and had a great time. I don't know if I'll do the Happy Meal thing again because I felt bad eating McDonalds in front of kids with school lunches, but we will go have lunch with Emma again. It was great to meet some of her friends and to be able to see her teacher again. I think Uncle Ryan might be Emmas next surprise guest...we'll have to see. It's a very noisy experience filled with lots of six year olds (this school has 13 first grade classes), so I hope he's up for it.

Emmanuel

I've been thinking about something for the past few days that I thought I would share, since it's been such an encouragement to me. It is such a priveledge to be a stay-at-home mom/aunt, but it is also one of the most frustrating and exhausting jobs there is!!! I'm sure all of you mommies out there will agree. On Wednesday morning we had "one of those mornings." No one liked what they were supposed to wear (why is the Lightning McQueen shirt always dirty when I need it). No one liked their breakfast. We spent 20 minutes looking for a missing shoe that ended up being in the toy box (thanks to a helpful 2 year old who was cleaning up). We were supposed to be at our playgroup at 9:30am and we got there sometime around 10am. As I was speeding down the road, handing sippy cups to the passengers in the backseat, trying to get there on time (I was in charge of story time) the word Emmanuel kept coming to my mind.

Emmanuel means God With Us and I know that it was God who was bringing that word to my mind. Why else would I think of a word that I usually associate with Christmas? God was reminding me that he's not this far away being who is completely unreachable. He's not this authoritative ruler who expects me to obey a bunch of rules and then leaves me on my own to figure it out. Nope...He's the one who made me. He made my personality...the same personality that hates to be late. He knew that I was going to be a "mom" to three (soon to be four) kids under that age of five and for some reason He thought I could handle it. After all, He's promised me that he won't give me anything that I can't handle. Over the past two days I've begun to notice so many ways that He is Emmanuel....He's with me!

1. When I'm reminding a four year old to stop yelling and have a kind heart: God is reminding me that I need to listen to what I'm saying too!

2. When I'm crawling under the kitchen table with my pregnant belly, trying to wipe up whatever we had for lunch: God is reminding me that I'm serving him by loving these kids.

3. When Emma gets home from school and rattles on for the next 40 minutes about her day: God is reminding me that I'm His child and he would love it if I would take the time to talk to him like Emma talks to me. He reminds me that these are moments with her to cherish because they won't last forever.

4. When Christian wants me to lay with him in bed until he falls asleep: God is reminding me that this isn't a waste of time (when I could be doing laundry or preparing morning sippy cups) that really this is a good time to pray for my precious boy.

5. When I got a bill from the insurance company saying they won't pay for the $600 ultrasound I just had: God is reminding me to be thankful for the healthy baby He's given me. He will provide!

6. When Nate falls asleep in the car and it's not nap time yet (knowing this will probably ruin nap time): God is reminding me to be thankful for the peace that little boy has in his life...despite it all.

7. When Ryan tells me he has to travel for work, for an entire week AGAIN: God is reminding me...I am with you!

Over and over again I can hear that still small voice whispering in my ear and I know that God is with me. He cares about all of this. He cares about what I care about; the crayon on the kitchen table, the Polly Pockets that are everywhere, the price of gas, the Sunday School lesson that I haven't planned yet,

Emma was so excited....

Emma came home from school today so excited because she got to pray for the snack for her class today. Apparently, a boy in her class asked if he could pray for the snack. Emma's teacher said "yes," so Emma piped up and asked if she could pray too! I'm so proud of her for being brave and setting such a good example for everyone. Who knows if the trend will continue, but I think it's great! Emma is also excited because she has surprise visitors coming to have lunch with her tomorrow.

Hiking in the Shenandoah Mountains!

On Saturday we headed down to Virginia to hike in the Shenandoah Mountains. We met my brother Tim and his family there and my parents and Amy and her children traveled down with us. It was quite an eventful day!

Nathan is checking out a few specimens at the visitor's center.
Christian doing his own scientific investigation. Christian and Nate warming up in front of the fire at the visitor's center!
We all hiked to a waterfall called Dark Hollow Falls. To get to the falls you basically had to go down the side of a mountain. That of course means you also have to go straight back up the side of the mountain. Going down was no problem!! The kids were running most of the way. Getting back up was a different story. Christian loved getting a boost from his daddy and Nathan was perfectly content to be carried the entire way by PopPop (my dad).
Amy and Abby in front of Dark Hollow Falls. What a beautiful sight...it was worth the hike!
Emma was the only kid who hiked the entire trail on her own two feet! She loved seeing the waterfall and later in the evening she got to see some deer up close.
Aunt Erin and Amy on the trail.
Taking a little break in the middle of the hike. It was a very chilly day. The high was in the low 40's, but with the wind chill it felt like it was below freezing. However, we warmed up quickly on the trail.
Adam and Hannah got to head down the trail in style. Hannah had injured her foot a few days before so she didn't do much walking. Tim somehow managed to get them back up the mountain before I even arrived at the top.

Abby getting a boost from Uncle Ryan. Look at the incline behind them.
I may be six months pregnant, but I still hiked down the mountain. I got lots of comments from other people passing me on the trail about how they hoped I didn't have the baby on the way back up. I was actually a little worried about that myself, so I really took my time. Christian kept crying because he wanted me to carry him up the mountain. I would still be on that trail if I had to carry him!!! That's what Daddy's are for!!!
PopPop and Adam after the hike!

Ryan enjoying a cup of coffee and some fun company. Look at the beautiful mountains in the background.

Amy and Mom (Grandmom Brinkley)

Uncle Ryan and Emma having a little rest in the leaves after a big picnic lunch.

It took Christian about 3 minutes to fall asleep on the car ride home.

Christian wasn't the only one sleeping. Nathan and Amy were sound asleep too. Look at the two of them. I've always thought Nate looked a lot like his daddy, but I can see a strong resemblance to Amy here too!