...And still their heavenly music floats...

We sing the kids to sleep every night. And since Halloween we have been singing only Christmas songs at Sterling's request. I have become very familiar with almost all the Christmas songs there are! But every time I sing this song I am struck by the simple beauty of the poetry that seems to paint such a scene of calm rejoicing and hope in my mind. Praise to the God of God and Light of Light! (Adeste Fidelis: 'Deum de Deo,
lumen ad lumine')

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old

From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold

Peace on the earth, goodwill to men, from heaven's all gracious king

The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing



Still through the cloven skies they come with peaceful wings unfurl

And still their heavenly music floats, O'er all the weary world.

Above its sad and lowly plains they bend on hovering wing

And ever o'er its Babel sounds the blessed angels sing




For lo the days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old

When with the ever circling years shall come the time foretold

When the new heaven and earth shall own the prince of peace their King

And the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing

Deep Freeze

That's what a local news channel is calling this weather... I don't think it's that dramatic, but still cold and surely I haven't seen this much snow here since the silver thaw of 1989. 9 plus inches of snowfall yesterday! We are housebound and trying to keep us and the kids from going crazy, but it is really beautiful!

We have been baking cookies, working on projects, playing outside, watching movies, and playing trains. Doug was pretty diligent about keeping the driveway cleared off a bit. And we tried to keep the snow off our canopy, but failed as you can see... It gave up the ghost this morning with a loud bang!

I am a little disappointed to see the freezing rain this morning- the snow was much more beautiful, therefore more worthy of putting up with. Rain (freezing or otherwise) is just plain boring... and it looks like it might warm up just in time for Christmas, so instead of having a beautiful and really rare white Christmas, we will have a beautiful and quite common green Christmas. Gotta love Christmas in the NW...

What to do...

What do you do on an icy day, when you have access to an awesome camera and a lot more important things to do? Set up a backdrop and play dress-up of course!



At least someone is getting use out of your camera Michelle... BTW, you'll need to charge the batteries...

Could it get any colder?!

I've decided that I live in the coastal Northwest for a reason! I don't think I like this super-cold dry wind or the lingering icy snow either! It's the last week before Christmas, I can't go anywhere, and I have things to do.



It snowed all day yesterday. Something practically unheard of for here, because a) we never get this cold until at least January and b) if it does snow, it's a light dusting that starts melting off before you wake up. The kids were super excited about it and so we took them out for a short walk. I think it took us longer to get them dressed and ready than the walk itself.











The kids asked for a snowman, so I took off my gloves and rolled him up, then Sterling asked where his nose was, so I grabbed a leaf and two pieces of barkdust for the eyes. They put some snow on top of him which made him look like a snowbird and then promptly kicked him over. Why do I bother?



We brought them inside and gave them a warm bubble bath and hot chocolate.


They canceled church yesterday too, so we got to enjoy a relaxing snowed-in day at home. Then after naps, we bundled the kids up again to walk up the street to our friends' house for a potluck/Wii party.The kids had a lot of fun playing together and it was just a nice feeling to be all cozy eating dinner and socializing with a cheery Christmas tree inside with a snowy, quiet night outside.





Summary: One day of snow is fun, but a week of icy roads is NOT!

Christmas Craziness

Stole this from Ceri who stole it from someone else... Love it!!

Straight No Chaser, Twelve Days of Christmas

Digi Scrap Junkie

Heaven knows I have more important things to do like making Christmas gifts, doing my church stuff, cleaning the house, showering, etc... But I am totally addicted to downloading digi scrap kits and cute fonts and using them to make new Blogger backgrounds and desktop backgrounds. It feels therapeutic to be creative and learn something new when I feel like I mostly clean up toys and chauffeur.

Here are some of my favorite sites:
ScrapNfonts
dafont
urbanfonts
Dezigns By Ali
Simply Clean Digi Scraps
Summertime Designs
Alie Brown's Layouts

There's also a Christmas Convoy going on where designers offer up free digi kits and other embellishments! Of course typing "digital scrapbook freebies" or "free fonts" into Google doesn't hurt either...

Wish-Wish Wites

That's Evie's version of Christmas Lights. Sterling's version two years ago was Mit-mit 'ites, now he's got it down to Christmas Wights. Poor unintelligible children...how will they get through life... One of my favorites from Sterling right now is, 'Do we going to bed now?' 'Are we going to bed now...?' I say. It hasn't sunk in yet though. My favorite of Evie's is, 'Ma whore." Excuse me? Translation: 'My stroller.' We have a pretty good time with that one. "Is that Daddy's stroller?" "No. No Dada whore, ma whore!" Good times...

Anyway, Doug put up our Christmas lights this year and did a fine job! Our house looks like a Gingerbread house- the kids love it! We've been driving the kids around different neighborhoods to check out other lights too. Doug likes to drive by real slow while we peer out our car windows at other peoples' houses, sometimes he pulls over and stops altogether and shuts our headlights off which makes me pretty uncomfortable. The homeowners frequently look out their windows at us trying to figure out what our problem is or if they know us- next time I think we should all get out and see if we could score some dinner. Last week some guy stopped working in the garage to come see who was casing the joint...

Tonight we went to the Zoo Lights as part of a combined FHE group. Our hostess was so kind and made all the kids a goodie bag with cookies and brought Ghiradelli's as reinforcement for the parents- Thank you! One of the Zoo trains was broken, so we waited extra long for a train and all 21 of us (10 parents, 11 kids) crammed into 4 teeny rows in the train car to make sure we all made it on together. It was great fun and the kids loved the Christmas lights of course.

Reflections of Christ

Okay. Probably half of those who read this blog saw this video Reflections of Christ last night at Enrichment so this is not an original post, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. Such poignant photographs set to a beautiful version of my most favorite hymn! What a beautiful way to express testimony of the Savior through music and art! So I thought I would embed this video here so all can witness what Mark Mabry et al. have made. (Don't forget to turn off the music player in the sidebar.)

Tough Decision

Should we get rid of the kids...? or the tree...?

This is what it used to look like. Doug and I bought three of these the first year we had a Christmas tree. We've had them twice as long as we've had Sterling (who, by the way, was the culprit, though it took quite a bit of interrogation to resolve).

The Kids
Pretty Dang Cute
Warm & Squishy
Fragile
Expensive


The Tree
Beautiful
Quiet
Fragile
Expensive
Doesn't Backtalk
Doesn't Break Things

Well, despite the convincing evidence in favor of the tree, I'm afraid we will have to keep the kids.

A Tale of Two Black Fridays

I never shop on Black Friday! Well, that is to say I never wake up early to shop on Black Friday and y'all are nuts who do! Craziness. I like a good deal, but I like sleep even better. And all the makeupless raging estrogen, bumper car-ing their carts through the store, powered by several triple espressos and semi-maxed credit cards, all grasping for the item I am looking at does nothing to inspire me to go! Scary.

I digress.

Black Friday Tale #1
This Black Friday we slept in (a miracle in this house) and went to Target well after the initial rush was over and then met up with some friends at the MAX to head downtown for the annual tree lighting ceremony. We got there just as it was starting which meant that we were able to hear only the top-most notes of Aaron Meyer's violin and we could see about the top half of the tree. Still fun. Afterward we had the totally unique idea of rushing into the mall's food court to grab some dinner... with the other 2,000 people who had the same unique idea. We hovered like vultures around those eating waiting for our opportunity to swoop down and snatch up their table and then snarled viciously at anyone who tried to steal chairs. Our group ended up separating and going home alone. We were lucky enough to catch a MAX with two nice men who played pick-a-boo, hide and seek, and too-slow-Joe, with Sterling. The conductor even opened his door to peek out and say "Hi" to Sterling and Evie (which Doug has never seen in his 9 years of MAX commuting)! Evie's diaper leaked on Doug (as it turns out later, it wasn't just #1, either) and I'm pretty sure we all got sick from germs on the train. And, to top it off, as we were walking home we saw a coyote cross our path, so we had to walk the other way. Anyway, I've decided we need to take public trans. into the city more often since such exciting things never happen when you drive around in Suburbia!

Black Friday Tale #2
This is a story about Roux (pronounced Roo).

He is, or was, the spawn of Satan in feline form. This cat would literally stalk you down a dark corridor and then leap at the opportune moment exposing all of his claws and baring his teeth. He would hide around corners and jump out batting your legs as you shriek and kick and run. He batted all of our round ornaments off the tree and down the stairs when we left for vacation during Christmas. He shredded toilet paper off the rolls, killed field mice, and could never keep a collar on. He was also the biggest brawler in the neighborhood and consistently came home with wounds that required a vet to insert a drain to relieve the abscesses. He often went next door like it was his own home and several times frightened our neighbor lady very badly by jumping onto her bed in the middle of the night. He slept in our bathroom sink, and more than once crouched on the retaining wall in the front yard only to pounce out at a couple of ladies and their Great Dane. Not afraid!

On a particular Black Friday 5 years ago, Michelle and I went Black Friday shopping to World Market where I got this cute kitty stocking for the very bad kitty.

Only to discover upon coming home that the very bad kitty could still not be found. We hadn't seen him since Thanksgiving in fact. Doug had asked at our neighbor lady's and she hadn't seen him since he was prowling around her house the day before. We were at a loss and expecting the worst. It just so happened that Doug remembered seeing that the neighbor lady had ordered furniture and it was delivered the day before, so he called the furniture store. Fortunately they were only a few miles away and claimed they had a small, furry stowaway who was currently living in the back of their truck eating leftover turkey. As we drove up, Roux immediately started mewing at the familiar sound of our truck and was very loving (on this particular occasion) at being reclaimed.
I think it goes without saying that he got coal in his stocking for Christmas.