What We Watched Tonight

What We're Listening To...

Courtney found this absolutely brilliant CD: The Annie Moses Band as we were looking for some good Christmas music at the store last night. Check out the video bar in the right column to see a sample video. Click on the first frame.

Books We're Reading

Operation Christmas Child

Paige and I will be joining our Youth Group, Grounded for Life, this Friday to work with Samaritan's Purse to pack Christmas boxes for Operation Christmas Child in Orange County.

Click on this video to see a short clip on what Operation Christmas Child does for children around the world.

We are very excited to be a part of this! What a great way to kick off our Christmas celebration!

Christmas Traditions

We asked the kids this year what they'd like to see happen for Christmas and the consensus was that they'd like to make sure that we do all of our Family Traditions. They were feeling that as they get older, we tend to let the traditions fall by the wayside.

Instead of getting caught up in the commercial side of Christmas this year, we wanted the month of December to be a time where we celebrate home, family, tradition and focus on the Reason for Christmas.

So, we're making a list:

Some traditions we have:

• Reading One Wintry Night by Ruth Bell Graham
• An Advent Calendar that reads through the Bible Story of Jesus' Birth
  
• Having an Advent Wreath on the dining room table - lighting a candle each Sunday along with reading some advent scriptures.
• Putting up a Jesse Tree - Reading a book and scriptures and hanging ornaments that correspond to the story.
• We have the whole family participate in getting all the decorations out of the garage, decorating the house and hanging the outside lights and putting stockings on the fireplace.
• We go to Starbucks for hot coco and coffee and drive around the neighborhoods that have special Christmas decorations and lighting in their yards.
  
• The entire family goes to (at least) 2-3 tree lots to pick out the perfect tree. Strapping it on the roof of the car and driving home to have hot coco and popcorn while we decorate it.
  
• We have a list of favorite movies that we have to watch each December: It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, A Christmas Carol, A Muppet Christmas, Charlie Brown Christmas
• We usually try to see the Nutcracker Ballet
• The kids spend at least one night in the living room with the tree lights on all night.
• We make a gingerbread house and let the kids decorate it. Sometimes we do more than one and have team competitions.
  
• We have a traditional Christmas Morning Breakfast served on Great Grandma's China
• Ron and I buy stocking stuffers for the kids and wrap them late on Christmas Eve - listening to Christmas carols in front of the fireplace in our bedroom.

It's alway hard to make the transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas, I can't believe a week of December has already flown by! I better get in the garage and start digging out the boxes!

Just Finished Reading...

Just finished reading another George Eliot novel, Silas Marner, and am adding it to my list of favorites. Although the plot is simple, I love her writing style, her beautiful use of language and the insightful character studies.

Zach and Andrea

Courtney took some pictures of Zach and Andrea in Old Town Pasadena for her photography class- here are a couple. More to come...

Our Annual Thanksgiving Hike