some christmas rambling

whew.

its over.

the best christmas ever.

to date for the douglas family.

it gets sweeter.

and sweeter.

and i love it all!

we had a few new traditions going this year!
all of which we will repeat.

for sure.

1. Light 'em Up with my bff's new company lil light o' mine.

Basically, in my words, carrying the light of Jesus all over the town with us. lighting up friends, neighbors, strangers, firemen, mailmen, waitresses, water delivery guys, toll-booth goers, santas, with fun, easy, cheap, sweet, thoughtful ideas! It was AWESOME!!! My girls got so into it! It was a HUGE idea for us! Harper is still telling everyone Merry Christmas! To her, it continues. And it should. So we will figure that out for our family this year! How to spread the good news of Jesus as a family with kindness and generosity and love throughout the year. HUGE! It should always come this natural! Love what I am learning from my babies!

2. Jesse Advent Tree. Another bff, Amy, has always been a step (or 8) ahead of me when it comes to planning for special days, especially holidays. She's just thoughtful. And does her research. And knows what she wants to teach her kiddos. So naturally, what seems like a good idea to her, I adopt as my own - if I have time! This time I did! We stopped by her house on the way home from the AU v somebody game this fall. She was making all these ornaments and had a book call the Advent Jesse Tree. It was a book full of devotions, a symbol that coordinated with each story and it was AWESOME!!! I was inspired! Ordered the book the next day and could not wait til December 1 to begin. My girls, strike that, my Emma Kate, was so into it! She listened attentively at dinner or breakfast or whenever we had time to go through the devotion that day and answered every question with excitment. We read stories straight from God's story. Beginning with creation, the fall, Noah, David, Joseph, Moses, Ruth, one for each day of Dec ending with the birth of Jesus!

Moment of honesty! We did over half of the days, but not all. I am not THAT with it! Come on! But, I tried not to give myself a hard time! It was truly a blessing to our entire family. And the way the girls eyes lit up when they saw what the ornament was for that day was such a treat! A definite DO AGAIN for our family!

3. Cinnamon Rolls for Christmas! Mmmmmm...found this recipe from you know who a little while back. Looked daunting, but she swore it wasnt. After reading the recipe over and over and over again I decided I could totally do it. So we gave it a shot. Flour, yeast, rising, butter, and all! And boy oh boy, am I glad we did! THESE CINNAMON ROLLS MAKE ME DROOL!!! Even Art, my sweet decliner, ate them up! Until he saw the Krispie Kremes mom got him! One batch makes like 6 pans. So plenty to share! We made one batch the week before Christmas, froze them, then shared with neighbors later in the week. Then Christmas Eve we worked on another batch of the batter together, then rolled them out together on Christmas morning for our family and firemen and other unsuspecting beneficiaries! It was perfect! And just something I wanted to do, and hooray, I followed through!!! Simple people. Gotta keep it simple! We even left some for Santa, along with Harpers half chewed on carrots for the reindeer. Eeew. Santa loved them. He even left a note that we need to send the recipe to Mrs Claus! Even she likes our baking! Duh!

So that's it! We did some other fun things of course. But pretty much kept it simple around here. Not even ornaments on our tree. Slacker! We made some ornaments and threw those up there, but maybe we will pull them all out next year! Maybe! A 15 minute Christmas clean-up was pretty rad on the 26th!

GOAL: keep focus and attention on the birth of our sweet baby Jesus and all He has done for us while having fun and enjoying time together, trying new things, and learning more of Gods story!

I would say from my point of view definitely Mission Accomplished!

Pictures coming!