Merry Christmas

The royal family

Hello everyone again.  I hope the preparations for Christmas is not too stressful.  I remember when the kids were younger and Christmas was all about presents and such I would be going nuts trying to get them all squared away.  Now I take quite a different look at Christmas.  This year I take special pleasure in picking out just 3 special presents for our kids.  Sharon, my wonderful friend, introduced me to this idea a few years ago and it has worked really well for me.  I give three gifts, each representing the gifts of the magi to the Christ child.  It is a lot of fun to figure out what to give for gold, frankincense (representing a gift for the body) and myrrh (representing spiritual growth).  With each I take out some time to write a prayer for each gift and each kid.  It is a lot of fun and much more rewarding for me and the kids (any gift is cool with them, really).  That said, I am all set with Christmas and it was pretty painless.  We had one incident where Natasha's gold gift was supposed to be a weekend at a concert with her friend Esther from PA.  The girls were so looking forward to this but no matter what we couldn't get tickets, which was totally strange.  I sent perfectly good links to my friend who sent back that the links either didn't work or were blank.  After about 2 weeks or so of going back and forth, the Lord finally got my attention and I decided that we weren't going, for whatever reason.  To come to find out they ended up having a family emergency and we would not have been able to go anyway.  I didn't know, my friend didn't know, but the Lord knew!

Anything in there?

Mail call!!!

 Up here in the north things are pretty much routine.  School is school and Logan did very well at his initial evaluation for special education.  He is now registered in VT to be home schooled and so we are now on our way to becoming Vermonters.  We won't be considered Vermonters ever, since we were not born and raised here but we are getting settled.  The kids built a wonderful wooden mail box and we now can get our mail right at home.  I almost went to the post office today to get our mail.  Rather silly.  Tom now has his driver's license and I am getting mine this week.  I keep forgetting the paperwork and I had to bring 

my green card and all.  Soon the car will have her license changed to a green plate.  That will be strange and it will be difficult for us to identify our car.  There are about 1 million white Subaru in Springfield. Tasha is working hard to study for her permit.  She wants to get it soon and I would be very glad for her to have it.

Singing together is great

 Sean and I had the honor to sing a few tunes at church.  The church has a Friday night thing where they present different people.  We had an art show, and a comedian from Maine come to the church.  One of the wonderful ladies in the church, we sometimes do line dancing at her house which is a lot fun, heard me and Sean talking and found out that we sing/play guitar together.  She really wanted for us to come and sing on one of the Friday nights.  Sean and I just thought it would be one song and be done with it.  It didn't work out for a few weeks but then Sean was able to commit one Friday.  Pastor Tom (yes his name is Tom) came and showed me the calendar and on it we were the headliners for that particular night!  Right, I was a little nervous.  I hadn't really sung in a while, just in the shower (oh wait, we don't have one), and as we were practicing my voice was getting quite hoarse after the third song.  After praying about it for a little bit, Sean I think, mentioned that the lead singer for one of my favorite bands drinks hot milk with honey.  I tried it and my voice was just fine.  My nerves weren't though.  It turned out to be a lot of fun.     

Sean was excellent

I was a little nervous.  Can you tell?

The windows in the church are all still intact as are the stained glass windows.  We sang 5 songs all together and people were pleased.  They thanked us after.  I was so nervous as you might be able to tell from the picture.  Sean was as calm as normal.  Pastor Tom then interviewed us, which was a lot of fun.  We haven't gotten kicked out yet, which is always good.  The whole thing was a real blessing to me since I was able to do this with my oldest and still be able to show my face at church.  Hopefully we will be able to do this again.  No, Casting Crowns have not called and asked us to appear at their next concert, neither has Third Day.  I don't know what they are waiting for!  We didn't even get a high five from Chris Tomlin.  I mean, come on!

Sean and I were just down in CT for him to shoe the horses at my friend Julie's.  It was really great to see her and her husband for a moment.  Sean is getting much better at shoeing.  It took him a fraction of the first time he shod the horses.  He is very sure of himself now, which is nice to see.  He still wonders as he works whether he should proceed this way of that, but he is pretty sure of what he is doing.  He just filed for a business name and is planning on starting in the spring.  Right now is the worst time to start.  The horses are not being used and people are broke.  By spring people will recover and show season will start.

The hard wood is difficult to cut into boards

Tom is busy with several projects.  One is the well, the other are still the floor boards and then we are waiting for the septic still.  The weather is so so and he is pretty tired right now, so he is taking some time to recoup.  I think we will have a well soon, God willing.

 Tasha and Logan built the mailbox the other day and at first it was not easy for them to get together and do this, but they worked through their differences and came up with a pretty cool looking mail box.  It is certainly different than our neighbor's.  Does that mean anything?!?!?!?!


Just the other day I was alone at the house and I heard an impatient tapping on the door.  I went and opened it and low and behold it was my old friend Fear coming for a visit.  He had brought my old pal Depression.  Following them was good old Discontent.  They came right in and wanted to stay a while.  They had started to make themselves at home, putting up the pot for tea and had the water almost boiling.  I remembered that I had another friend waiting outside to come in.  He didn't knock impatiently but just waited to be invited in.  I threw open the door and in walked Jesus Christ, Emanuel.  The party changed quite quickly.  Instead of Fear, Depression, and Discontent controlling the party, they were quite meek and slunk out the back door.  Instead of letting the hot water go to waste, I invited Christ to have a cup of delicious tea with me and He stayed and we had a wonderful time.  In this time of holiday craze, remember, there is one who is waiting to be invited into the heart of the party.  He is waiting for everyone but we have to invite Him in.  He won't push His way through that door, like my other "friends".  He is quite the gentleman, who will wait to be asked.  And when He does come in what a party we have.  And He doesn't leave.  He stays and the party just gets better.  There are times we may forget that He is around and we allow our circumstances to pull us down but He is always there, waiting to rescue us from our worldly "Friends".  It is easy to let these circumstances pull us down.  Well, we have an out in our Lord and Savior.  Are we willing to let Him come in and turn our fleshly party into something beautiful?

Here is a song by "Casting Crowns", who still haven't called us by the way.  When I heard this song the first time, I cried (I guess I do that a lot with songs).  I hope you allow this song to speak to you.  The message is wonderfully appropriate around this time of the year.