Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Home again

We've been thinking of an old Sinatra song...

It's very nice to go trav'ling
But it's oh so nice to come home

I'll put some pics up when I get them. We (my extended family) went to the Oregon coast for Thanksgiving, and just got home last night. Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh :0) Rented a house right on the beach, in Lincoln City. I know, it's not summer, but we were out on the beach at least part of every day, and Sunday was actually warm - the boys were in T-shirts! And - an even bigger bonus - my mom found a house with an INDOOR POOL!

Unless you have little boys you may not realize the significance of that. Thing is, they have a lot of energy.
And it needs an outlet.
It WILL FIND an outlet.
So, rather than bouncing off the walls, they swam.
Every day.
A lot.

Am I thankful???? More than I can say! We have a family that - for the most part - likes to be together, generous parents who footed more than their share of the rental fee, the means to GET to Lincoln City (gas prices fell at just the right time for us!), and abundance - far beyond our needs.

The boys and I made a "Thankful Turkey" out of construction paper, and taped his bare body to a big window, with a pile of paper feathers, crayons and tape beneath him. By the end of our stay he was well-feathered :0)

We forgot our Thankful Leaf Garlands", but finished them today... just it time to start our Advent devotions a day late. If you have small kids, you might like some books I found. Ann Hibbard has written a few series of devotions centered around holidays (eg "Family Celebrations at Christmas", Easter, Thanksgiving, All Saints' Day.) They are fairly short (10 - 20 minutes) and have a little activity for the kids to do each day. This Thanksgiving we studied the lives of Elijah and Elisha, and how God provided for and through them. Each day had a symbol (jars of oil, a raven, etc.) that related to the Bible reading. Instead of putting them on branches (which seems more like a Christmas thing to me) we glued the symbols on colored paper leaves and made a garland of them. The boys really enjoy these devotions :0)

We SHOULD have started the Advent series last night, but arrived home just in time for a soccer game (Wyatt's), no candles to light, and too tired to be "into it". We'll do two this evening :0)

Now I'm scrambling... we are having an Open House this weekend, so I need to squeeze in four days of homeschool, put up all the Christmas decorations, and bake a ton of cookies. I have no idea if 10 people are coming or 100.

But I'm not stressed or anything... (nervous laugh)

1 comment:

leah said...

Matt's preschool (Christian, obviously) gave us a neat devotional advent calendar that folds out and has stickers that accompany a short story for each day. Since Matt is so young, it's perfect! We have the Little People nativity, but it often involves fire trucks and other things that shouldn't have been involved, lol!