I was going through some photos to put together a montage for Samuel's third birthday, and I saw that I never finished editing my photos from Christmas day. Here they are, finally!
We add a new ornament or five to the tree each year. I took the kids to Target one day before Christmas and let them pick out one ornament each. Eva Kate chose Minnie Mouse and Samuel chose Superman. The sphere with the fish on it was our souvenir from Hawaii. We bought it at the resort we stayed at on Kauai. It was handpainted by a local artist. The ornament on the bottom row was one of the stocking stuffers I gave James. We had to say goodbye to Daisy in June, and these were some of my favorite photos of her. That ornament is made from metal, and I ordered it from Shutterfly. I'm really pleased with the quality.
Stocking stuffers are always fun. The kids got socks, a coin, soap, sunglasses, cutters for bread, annd Frozen band-aids.
Eva liked the new silicone baster that I gave James. Silly girl. We ate breakfast after we had opened our stockings. The kids wanted to use their new bread cutters.
On to the rest of the gifts.
The day after Halloween, I got up early and went to Wal-mart to get some costumes for the kids. These were a big hit. They like to play dress up. I embroidered chef's hats and aprons for them too, and they have already used these several times.
I gave James the Rosetta Stone spanish suite and he gave me a studio backdrop that is portable. I'm looking forward to using this!
The kids had a fun surprise waiting for them behind these doors. James' parents gave them a power wheels car that they can both ride in. The weather was really nice, and they were able to play outside for a while on Christmas day.
I took Samuel to register for preschool a few days ago. He was very excited to see the school, and he told me that he would drive himself there in his new car - not ride in my car. Hahaha.
The main gift we gave the kids this year for Christmas, was a ride on the Polar Express at Union Station. I was so excited to hear about this event! It had probably been 5 years since I had been inside of Union Station, and while it was a beautiful building, it had really become run down. It was in much better shape this time - and I hope this event helps in the revitalization efforts.
Our tickets were for Christmas Eve. There was a "depot" where we waited to board the train. There were snowmen, Christmas trees, and a bell that we could ring. The kids wore their new Christmas pajamas. Some of the adults wore their pajamas as well, but James and I opted to wear regular clothes. We were able to view part of the movie in the "depot" while we waited.
There were characters from the movie on the train. Samuel and Eva Kate like most of them, but they were scared of the elves.
She ate that entire cookie. Samuel barely touched his - he was too busy taking everything in to eat.
In the middle of the train ride, Santa boarded the train. He gave every child a silver bell, sang and danced, and took a photo with each family.
Samuel said that getting his bell from Santa was the best part of the ride. We hung them on our Christmas tree the next day.
Santa danced to "Let it Go." This was the most entertaining part of the ride to me. Hahaha.
After the ride, we ate dinner at Union Station. They had salad, chicken, pasta, and green beans for the adults. They had a kid's buffet with mini corn dogs, mac-n-cheese, chicken fingers and fresh fruit.
Union station was beautifully decorated. These photos are from the room where we ate dinner.
Since the ride, Samuel has asked to go back. He also pretends to be the train conductor.
We put our Christmas decorations up the weekend after Thanksgiving. Samuel was interested in participating.
This Little People Nativity set was his Christmas gift from us last year. He likes to play with it, and it hasn't looked that tidy since this photo was taken.
I set up the Advent boxes for him. There is one piece of candy inside each one, and he loves to open his box for the day and retrieve his treat. He quickly learned how to climb up in the chair so he could reach them
He wanted to help set the Christmas Village up.
I finished most of the decorating on the Christmas tree while he napped, but I left a few ornaments out for him so he could put them on the tree. The trains were James' ornaments when he was a boy, and his mom passed them on to us. Samuel is fascinated with them. He walks around the tree looking for them, and he says "choo-choo" when he finds them.
He's not sure about our inflatable bear. He likes to look at it, but he doesn't want to get very close to it. We usually turn it off in the daytime. If he notices that it isn't inflated, he will point to it and say "ah oh" until we turn it back it back on.
This Christmas was so much happier than the past few had been for us. The child that we'd waited for was finally with us. We spread our celebrations out over three weeks. The week before Christmas we spent a few days in Arkansas visiting my parents. One night while we were there, we all went to see the Christmas lights at Garvan Gardens. It was a very nice display. After we had finished walking through the garden, we went to eat at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. Samuel didn't want to eat the dinner that I had packed for him, which was sweet potatoes. So I decided to try to offer him the only that I'd ordered that he could chew - refried beans. He thought they were great.
We spent Christmas at home, and some of our neighbors came over for Christmas dinner. The main gift that James and I gave Samuel was a Fisher Price Nativity set. We didn't have it set up for him. I had just wrapped up the boxes. I'd unwrap one box & he would crawl away with a wise man. Unwrap another box, and he'd crawl away with a sheep and so on. I wasn't sure that all the pieces had been accounted for, so after he was put down for a nap I decided to set it up and see if we had all the pieces. Well, we had everything except baby Jesus. James and I both crawled around the living room looking under the furniture looking for it. No luck. I had already bagged up the discarded wrapping paper and taken it to the garage, so I brought it back inside so we could go through it. I was very glad that we found it mixed up with the crumpled paper!
The cake was my main contribution to dinner. James baked the ham. This was my first time to try making fondant, and it was not as hard as I thought it would be. I used marshmallow cream and confectioner's sugar. I blended them together in my stand mixer, which kept me from getting super sticky marshmallow cream all over my hands. I flavored it with almond extract, and it tasted much better than boxed fondant. Here's the instructions I followed: The Farm Girl Recipes
We went to Louisiana for a few days around New Year's to celebrate Christmas and New Year's with our family there. James' grandparents gave us Sky Miles tickets, so we were able to fly. Samuel did great on the plane. Not a bit of crying. He will barely tolerate an hour long drive to downtown in his car seat without having at least a small melt down. He's learned how to crawl, and he doesn't care to be restrained for very long.
After having two very active dogs in our house for several years, I'd learned to put only unbreakable ornaments at the bottom of the tree. Samuel was excited to find pretty ornaments at the bottom of his grandmother's tree. We got to the ornaments before he broke anything.
Samuel got to see his cousin for a little while. I think these two will love playing together!
Christmas this year did not happen the way we thought it would. Just a couple of months ago, we thought we'd be spending Christmas in Ethiopia, meeting our daughter for the first time. I have to say that it was hard for me to feel like celebrating. After all the time we had put into this adoption, it seemed that we were finally near the finish line. Now the finish line has fallen off the horizon, totally out of view. If we had known two years ago that this path to adoption would lead us to the heartbreak that we have been through, I don't know if I would have wanted to do it. I certainly would not have approached it with the hopeful optimism that I approached it with back then.
I've thought a lot lately about the story in Genesis where Jacob wrestles with God. God tells Jacob that he has struggled both with man and with God and that he (Jacob) has overcome. I feel like I've been doing a lot of wrestling and struggling lately, but I don't feel like I have gotten much resolution. We had the chance to see the Christmas program at the church James grew up in while we were there for Christmas. One of the songs the choir sang was "Take my Life and let it Be."
Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee;
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love;
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee,
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only, for my King;
Take my lips, and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee,
Filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold;
Not a mite would I withhold;
Take my intellect, and use
Every power as Thou shalt choose,
Every power as Thou shalt choose.
Take my will, and make it Thine;
It shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart; it is Thine own;
It shall be Thy royal throne,
It shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love; my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure-store.
Take myself, and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee,
Ever, only, all for Thee.
I will confess, that song brought hot tears of anger to my eyes. While I know that God has a purpose for all things, it has been hard for me not to be angry with Him. We both feel that the call to adopt was from that Lord, and we both would willingly go anywhere on this earth that He sent us to. We both believe that the church is called to be the hands and feet of Christ, and serving as a part of His body is our delightful duty. We poured ourselves into this adoption. We answered the call to adopt. We gave of our time, our money, and our hearts, and all we have to show for it so far is broken hearts. Just because you are willing to be obedient to God, it doesn't mean that your life here on this earth will be full of happy endings. It is certainly painful to wait on the goodness of God.
During the season of Advent this year, I wondered what it was like for Mary to obey God when it very well could have cost her life. Getting pregnant before you were married was quite a scandal in her community. Was she scared? Did she doubt God? I don't know, but we do know how the story ended. She was faithful, Joseph stayed with her and she saw her Son bring redemption.
Have you cursed at the wind
Have you cried to the heavens
Have you fought with this mercy you don't understand?
James and I have talked about what we are going to tell our kids about Santa a number of times. We're in agreement, we just don't know how the best way to handle our plan will be. See, we are fed up with how consumeristic Christmas is. We don't want to turn our kids into little consumeristic monsters, any more than they will inevitable become since they will be Americans. We want Christmas to be about the Christ child. The God-Man. Deity mingling with fallen man to do a job that should have been ours, but we were inadequate for the task.
We both believed in Santa as young children, but I had the whole thing figured out by the time I was in kindergarten. I have a few memories of writing letters to Santa and wondering if I would catch him in our living room on Christmas Eve, but not many. We aren't at all upset over our experiences, but the whole thing about telling your kids lies about Santa, the Easter bunny, and the Tooth Fairy just doesn't sit right with me. It seems to be a way to manipulate your child into behaving properly. Attributes that belong only to God get handed to Santa. . ."he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake. He knows when you've been bad or good . . ." Santa is not God, God is not Santa, and only God is omniscient. If you lie to your kids about Santa, the Easter bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, what else are you going to lie to them about? We want our kids to trust us to provide them with honest answers to our questions. We are going to tell them the history and folklore behind the story of Saint Nicholas and they can have their photo taken with Santa if they want to, but that's about it. There will no gifts from "Santa" under our tree. No cookies for Santa left out on Christmas Eve - the dog would eat them anyway! Instead of those cookies, we're going to have a birthday cake for Jesus.
Before you start leaving me nasty comments, I'm not trying to criticize anyone for how they have chosen to celebrate Christmas with their children. This is just how we are thinking about doing things.
Since this will hopefully be our last Christmas with no kids in the house, we decided to try something new this year. You know, give it a "dry run" before we had a kid in the mix. I made these little advent boxes.
This is just a few of them. There is one for every day of advent. Advent is the four Sundays before Christmas, so this year the first day of Advent was November 28th. Inside each box is something to read. Some days it is the words to an old Christmas hymn that I was unfamiliar with. Other days it is scripture. I also included some of John Piper's Advent poems. These poems can be found at Desiring God. We have been opening the box for the day at dinnertime, and reading what was inside. It has been good for us, and it has opened up conversation. I hope this will become a yearly tradition at our house. I got the supplies for the boxes at Michael's. Everything except for the ribbon came from the bridal department. The boxes are little metal tins that they sell for wedding favors.
For Christmas, we received a couple of adoption related gifts from out parents. My mom and dad gave us a book called I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla. The book discusses what children understand about race and how to talk about race with them in a positive manner. I have not gotten very far into, but I really like it so far.
James' parents gave us these cute Christmas ornaments. We are hoping to adopt a pair of siblings and we'd both love it if we got sisters, but we're open to what God has for us. We didn't get to see James' family until after Christmas this year, so we didn't get to put these on our tree this year. They will be on it next year though!
James and I spent Christmas Day in St. Louis this year because it was my turn to work the Christmas holiday. I had to work for a couple of hours in the early morning, and then I was on call for the rest of the day. I did get called back to work at 9:45 pm, but at least it didn't get in the way of our celebration.
She also got a bag of Dentastix. (FYI for dog owners - these really help with bad dog breath) She likes these. Daisy also got a bag of them. Lily got a new collar, but I didn't put the pic of it up.
Now for Daisy
Daisy got a giraffe toy . . .
. . .and Lily ran off with it!
Lily wants to see what I got. This was a goodie bag of Burt's Bee's products.
The main thing we got this year was a blue-ray player and surround sound system. James spent the morning getting it hooked up while I prepared dinner. I roasted a turkey breast and made rice and steamed green beans, and I warmed some store bought rolls to go with it.
