Sweet Momma Moment

Disclaimer: Events such as the following do not always occur in our home, but when they do, they are so very sweet!

My kids don't begin school until 8:45 (that seems so late to me) leaving us plenty of time in the mornings.  I've taken a bit of advantage of that and they generally have a chore or two to do before they head out the door.  This morning I had them for-go their normal chore and pick up the basement.  My reasons were two fold.  Even though they are responsible for cleaning parts of the house each week, they still need my attention occasionally!  So, I covered those chores and they had to clean up the basement.  Part of our basement consists of a large room where we have a vast majority of our toys that I don't often have them pick-up.  Needless to say, Legos and Playmobil have pretty much taken over that space and I find little joy in picking them up.  Off they went and it was really quiet.  I was busy with other things thinking that I should check on them to make sure cleaning up was actually happening, but I never did.  About the time we needed to leave for school, they all appeared and declared the basement cleaned.  When I returned, I went down there and it was beautiful!  I found the above note on the table downstairs that Luke had put together.  They had all worked together and did just what was listed.  To put the cherry on top, on the way out the door, Luke grabbed Hannah's backpack and carried it to the van.  She asked him what he was doing and he reminded her that it was help each other day.  Sweet music and thoughts to my ears and heart.  Definitely makes up for some of those "other" times....

Christmas Tidbits

We've had a bit of slower Christmas season than in some of the years past leaving room to relax, not post on my blog and just enjoying family time.  There are a few tidbits that I thought I'd share.

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Last weekend (which was beautiful for this time of year!), we headed out to a local church and walked through their "Journey to Bethlehem".  It was very well done.  We enjoyed the sheep, horse, and baby camel. More importantly, we caught a very, very small glimpse of some of what Joseph and Mary may have experienced on their journey.  It was good for the kids and me to have a better understanding of how they may have been in fear of the Roman soldiers and that they were most likely not treated fairly, not to mention that they didn't even have a room to stay in when Jesus was born.  It was a different, but good way to reflect on this Christmas season.

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We had a lyric debate of a popular Christmas carol this weekend.  What is the line in We Wish You a Merry Christmas?
a. bring us a thing of pudding (Luke)
b. bring us some piggy pudding (Hannah)
c. bring us some thingy pudding (Andrew)
d. bring us some fig and pudding (Chris)
e. bring us some figgy pudding (Kim)

So, we had Google settle the debate and "e" is the answer.  I won!

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Chris and I had a good chuckle when overhearing Hannah and Andrew try to determine what day six and seven were in The Twelve Days of Christmas.  The conversation went something like this.... I'm sure it's not exactly right, but it's close.  They were confusing each other....

Hannah: (singing) .... six swams a swimming, seven...
Andrew: no six laying geese
Hannah: six geese a laying
Andrew: seven... what's seven
Hannah: seven geese a laying
Andrew: seven swimming geese
Andrew: seven laying swans
Mommy (after having a quiet chuckle):  it's six geese a-layin' seven swans a swimming
Hannah: proceeds to sing the correct words

All that to say, we all failed when it came to 10-12.  Google wasn't handy and I never took the time to look it up so I still can't recollect those...

Thanksgiving Snapshots

Thanksgiving week started with a read along of the traditional Thanksgiving story done by Andrew's 1st grade class.  I was thankful to get to see him do it and thankful that they got to tell a big part of the story (for a public school).  At the end, his teacher had them go around and give their name along with what they were thankful for.  Andrew said he was thankful for his family.

 What a treat...we got to host my entire side of the family for Thanksgiving.  I'm not sure we've all been able to be at our house.  I loved it.  It was also the first time we'd all been together for Thanksgiving in 9 years.  That year we drove from Oklahoma to my sister's home then in Iowa with 2 month old Luke to surprise my parents.

 This little lady can not wait to get her ears pierced.  I'm sure she feels like 10 is far away, but it will be here too soon for her Momma.

We also got the tree up and decorated.  We've had a pre-lit tree for a few years and kept making due with the ones that wouldn't light.  All of that came to an end this year.  Chris and I with the help of Luke cut out 1000 lights from that tree and then strung ones that worked.  That took us at least 2-3 hours of both of us working on it.  Glad that's done and it should be much easier in the years to come!