Christmas Day

But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in teh city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased." Luke 2:10-14Our Christmas In Pictures

Photo Tinks by WiddlyTinks.com

Happy Birthday To My Oldest Baby!!!

12....12.....12 years old! It seems like just yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital!

Jay and I gave Anastasia her gift early this year so she could enjoy it for Christmas. She got a new tree, lights and some ornaments. Anastasia has always had her own little tree for her ornaments since she has so many with being a Christmas Eve baby. Now she has a new big one and the other girls are excited because they get her old one.

On her birthday morning she got to open a gift from her brothers and sisters....

They got her the Twlight book. She had been reading someone else's and really likes it. Now to be honest I was struggling with letting her read these but she has never really liked to read and this is a 400 page book that she is reading and enjoying and to see her excited about reading was so cool for me because I am and always have been an avid reader.

We will be having a party later in January. We wanted to seperate it from Christmas some and make sure I am fully recovered in order to host a giggling, pre-teen sleep over at our house.

So in honor of turing 12 here are 12 wonderful and/or unique things about Anastasia:

1) Anastasia loves God with all her heart!

2) Anastasia has a passion for all animals.

3) Anastasia is an awesome big sister who truly loves playing with her brother and sisters.

4) Anastasia has a servant heart and is always willing to help others no matter what.

5) Anastasia is pretty good at playing the guitar.

6) Anastasia is very open and honest.

7) I love watching her easily interact with all different people of all different ages with such ease.

8) Anastasia cherishes her friendships.

9) Anastasia loves to run and wants to try out for Track this spring.

10) Anastasia is an awesome help to me and is always willing to pitch in and get things done.

11) Anastasia has a great sense of humor and knows how to make me laugh.

12) and lastly I think she is very excited about becoming a teenager because she kept reminding me that in only 365 more days she will be 13!

I love you

Happy Birthday!

A Walk Through Bethlehem

Over the years Jay and I have gone to different church's "Walk Through Bethlehem" and when Jay got hired on as the Worship pastor at our church he expressed a desire to put one together. Well after many, many weeks spent praying and laboring by a whole group of people our church's "Bethlehem" came together and was a wonderful two nights spent celebrating our Lord and Savior's birth.

(Side note during this week I also had an extra 4 kids for two nights. My 8 week old niece was in the hospital so I kept her sister and brothers for a couple of days. We had a total of 10 kids !!)

Here is our Walk Through Bethlehem in pictures: I have a whole lot more pictures but here is a sampling.

Helping get Bethlehem ready. Jay would take a couple of the kids with each day that he went to go work on the set. They loved helping and seeing it all come together.

Roman Soldiers and the Census taker

The entrance to Bethlehem

Anastasia played the Census taker's daughter. Jay was originally supposed to play the part of the Census taker but decided to just be a townsperson so that he could walk around to help everyone.

Pastor Dan played Joseph and Pastor Don was Simeon the Priest

The Three Wisemen. One of the ladies from our church made all the main costumes. She did a fantastic job!

Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus and a shepherd boy. (Yes, that is me as Mary and Jadon is in the manger as baby Jesus)

My three little shepherd girls

Three little shepherd boys. (My nephews Zack and Devin with Joshua)

There were over 10 different booths with activites for each vistor to do something. This was the tye dying of material ie cotton. Some other booths were bead making, weaving, fruit stand, olive press, bread making, carpenter, potter and more.

A great picture of Jay if he didn't have the plastic bag in his hand!

Jewelery/bead making booth

Inside the church there was a meal of chili or soup and entertainment from different musical groups playing Christmas music.

Isaiah 9:6

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;

And the government will rest on His shoulders;

And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor,Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

Christmas Activities

A lot of our time the first few weeks of December was kept busy with getting ready for our church's "Walk Through Bethlehem". Jay was heading it up and I will write all about it in my next post. We did however manage to do some Christmas crafts and for our devotions we did our Jesse tree and ornaments this year. I had intended to do a Polar Express lap book and more Christmas activities but that didn't happen. I did however make workbox activities for the girls with the letter J. Check out these great activities from one of my favorite bloggers. They all focus on Jesus and the nativity, what fun!

We did read lots of Christmas books including one of our favorites: The Night Tree by Eve Bunting. Here are some pictures of some crafts we did this year:

Ginger bread house

Crafts

Sugar Cone Trees

Candy Cane Cookies

Our favorite activity is decorating sugar cookies. We make lots of different ones, use a bunck of colored frosting and sprinkles and come up with great masterpieces.

This next picture is of a new craft for us. I couldn't get a great picture with my camera but these are so adorable. I had each kids make one except we couldn't get Jadon to cooperate with his hand.

This is a clear bulb filled with silver tinsel. The white is a child's hand print and then we turned the fingers into snowmen. How cute is that!! I will treasure these ornaments. For a better picture and complete instructions visit Here.

Our Elf on the Shelf.....Freddy

The kids came home from church to find this box on the front porch (shhh they don't know that mail doesn't come on Sundays).

We brought it inside, opened it up.....

and this is what we found....

So we put it under the Christmas tree, which only had the lights on it so far.

When the kids woke up the next morning I could hear the commotion of them accusing one another of opening the box and then Joshua came running upstairs to tell Jay and I that the box was open and there was a little man sitting in our tree. WHAT??? (he he he). We went downstairs and this is what we saw....

There was a book that came with him so we read it together and it told us that Santa sent our elf and there are only two rules: 1) No one can touch the elf, it will take his magic away (he goes home to the north pole each night and returns each morning some where else in the house) 2) The elf is not allowed to talk but the kids and talk to the elf and tell him what they want for Christmas and if they have been good.

This was soooo much fun. Since I am catching up on my blog I am just going to do one post about the elf and show you some pictures of where we found him each morning. The kids loved waking up each morning and searching for him. They talked to him and tattled on one another to him and they were very sad Christmas Eve night when they told him good bye because they knew he would be going back to the North Pole and not returing until next year. They named him Freddy and registered him at Elfontheshelf.com

Guarding our mouse village in the front room

One morning the kids found the elf having dinner with barbie in the barbie house and the next day we found him in barbie's car in front of the tv. They were watching the Elf movie!

I think this day he was missing the colder weather at the North Pole because he got into our sugar and made a snow angel.

One morning they found him on top of our wreath holding the car keys...good thing we have an extra set.

The next morning we found out why he had the car keys....he decided to hide out in the car and go with us to Co-op.

One morning they found him just hanging around on our kitchen table light.

Christmas Eve morning the kids found him at the top of Anastasia's Christmas tree. He knew it was her birthday!

We can't wait till he comes back next year! Did you have an elf visit your house? If so tell us of some of his adventures we would love to hear them.