Christmas String Quartet

When Love Was Born

the cross in christmas from tammi dryden on Vimeo.

Christmas Baking

Making Christmas Gifts

Christmas Tradition

This year, the girls earned their own money and put together their own shoe boxes to send to Operation Christmas Child and Taylor and Ashley both went with our church youth group to the warehouse in Orange County to help pack and ship them.

Christmas Tradition

Advent: 3rd Sunday

Ruth, Part 3

Searching for the Perfect Christmas Tree.

When Christmas Doesn't Turn Out as Expected... or Experiencing A Real Christmas for Real Families

What a great reminder - this is a must read every Christmas! An article from: Desiring God blog Post: OF KIDS AND CHRISTMAS

Launching a New Women's Ministry Theme

This is our new logo for Sovereign Grace Church's Women's Ministry this year:

Second Sunday Advent Poem

Ruth, Part 2

We have power!

After almost 6 days without power or heat, we finally are on the grid! A friend of ours loaned us a generator yesterday. Sunday night was my breaking point where I couldn't take the cold and inconvenience any more and Ron got us a hotel room in town. It was soooo good to sleep in a warm room without shivering! Yesterday he set up the generator and we got food in the fridge and hooked up the heater. The temperature inside the house had gone below 50 and we could see our breath in the house. At least the generator helped get heat in the house so we could sleep comfortably.We hooked up some low energy LED Christmas lights and strung them in the living room, dining room and kitchen. looks kinda cozy!

Surviving the Pasadena Wind Storm

I am currently updating from my iPad. Will post pictures later.

 Huge wind storm blew through our area last Wednesday night. Santa Ana Winds devestated Pasadena and other cities in the San Gabriel Valley. many huge trees were uprooted and toppled onto steets and some crashed down onto homes and cars, over 200,000 homes were without power this week -now down to 46,000. we are one of them.

 We have been without heat or electricity for five nights. We finally had to leave because the house was so cold we could see our breath! For the past four days, while Ron was out of town, the girls and I have been "camping" at our house: working and living by candlelight in the evenings, piling up blankets to sleep under, all sleeping in our master bedroom in front of the fireplace, keeping the fire going most nights. We tried to salvage what food we could by storing it in a cooler with ice and having to sacrifice what we couldn't save. We scoured the town for flashlights and batteries, but never did find any, but luckily I had just bought a lot of holiday candles for both Thanksgiving and Christmas so we were well stocked and have been enjoying beautiful candlelit evenings in front of the fireplace each night. it stopped being fun when it got so cold that we got ache-y from all the shivering we were doing and the house never warmed up during the daytime.

The girls were troopers and had great attitudes-trying to make the best of a difficult situation. We picked Ron up tonight at the airport at 10 pm, the girls took the dog and went to spend the night at Courtneys (she has heat AND electricity!)and we found a cheap hotel with wifi for the night. Will update more when we can. I've been charging my cell phone and ipad at Starbucks and the church office when I can. So communication has been difficult. When Ron came home tonight, he blessed me with a comfortable bed, heat, electricity and wifi - to help make up for a difficult four days while he was gone.