The Christmas Spirit

This year, I wanted to start a family tradition of giving not only our money and physical gifts, but also our gift of time and labor to help others. I looked for a community service opportunity that Princess and I could participate in together. With a little help from my sister who works in the non-profit world, I found a great organization called Kids Meals. It is a non-profit that provides free lunches to children who are too young to go to school. For many kids, this is their only square meal each day. I was excited to learn that they welcome children volunteers. Princess was excited to spend a morning having one-on-one time with me.

We showed up around 9AM and we were immediately put to work packing lunches. We were a group of 5 adults and 2 children and we packed 800 sack lunches in less than 3 hours.

Sitting on one of the bags that we packed full of sack lunches.

This bag has 80 lunches in it.

The other adults were part of a group from Starbucks, who were very involved in the community. I learned that Starbucks employees participate in a community service event about once a month. I am impressed! Anyway, they made it alot of fun. They were very competitive and a little sarcastic and did alot of trash talking, all in the name of giving back to the community. Princess also had a great time decorating the lunch sacks, sorting through oranges, transporting bags and juices and sandwiches, and doing whatever the other little girl was doing. She really enjoyed it. We both did. We will definitly continue this tradition at Christmas time and even other times of the year. I would love for community service to become just a regular part of what our family does, any time of year. This was a good start.

Merry Christmas!

A few weeks ago, we talked my dad into taking some family pictures of us, in hopes that we might get a good one for our Christmas card. The clouds rolled in and took away our lighting right before we set out for our photo session, so the pictures are a little dark, but we came out with a few good ones. Here they are:

Christmas Crafts

I love homemade gifts. I love to make them, and I love to receive them. There's just something extra special about a gift that was made with the recipient in mind, don't you think?

The last two years, Princess has enjoyed making homemade gifts for her friends as well. This year, we also made gifts for the teachers. All of our ideas came from Family Fun and Parenting magazines. There are so many great ideas in there! The gifts turned out so cute that I just had to share them!

This is a set of felt and cork coasters. We used bright colors and funky patterns. They turned out super cute. We stuck a Starbucks giftcard in there as well, and Princess's teacher loved them!

Pumpkin's teacher is going to receive this bookmark, along with a giftcard to a local bookstore. I thought it was such a great way to say "Thank you for being a great teacher" in a gift-sort-of-way.

These are the rings and hair pins that Princess made for her friends. They turned out really cute! We used a penny for the base and glued a piece of paper the same size as the penny on top of it. Then she put a letter on each one for her friends' monograms and then we used ModPodge Dimensional Glaze to make it shiny. All her friends really loved these. I think I'd like one for myself, too!

Finishing Up

Well, it's the end of the semester and that means the end of this round of extracurricular activities. This fall, Princess was in cheerleading at our local YMCA. She started out being not too excited about it, but after the first few practices, she decided she was having fun and would stick with it. I think overall, she did enjoy the Monday night practices. However, cheering at the football and basketball games was like torture, for her and for us. She hated it, which make it not very much fun to watch. After every cheer, she would say, "Can I leave now?" I don't know who is happier that the cheerleading is over, Princess or her parents.

Cousins

For Pumpkin, it was a different story with ballet and tap. She loved it from the beginning. There were a few classes towards the end when she wasn't as excited about it, but she was really excited the day of her recital. She was so cute!!! And she did a great job. One of her dances used a teddy bear as a prop and she got so excited that she just threw her bear up in the air in the middle of the song! It was great!

Pumpkin is on the far right

I'm not sure what's next for us. Princess is talking about tennis and swimming and Pumpkin is talking about gymnastics. We'll see... One thing I know for sure: we won't be doing cheerleading with Princess again for a long long time!!

The God of History

Yesterday I began reading Walter Wangerin Jr.'s Preparing for Jesus (a book of meditations for the Advent season) as I have every year for the past six or seven years. But, today's meditation struck me in a way that it never has before. Today was about Zechariah and Elizabeth, God's promise to them that they would have a child even in their old age. Wangerin points out that every present moment is rooted in the past. As God makes this promise to Zechariah, it is linked to God's promise to Abraham and Sarah.

"In all of Scripture, these are the only couples both childless and too old to bear children; and in only these two cases does God announce the improbable birth not to the mother, but to the father. Therefore, Abraham and Sarah once introduced a fresh covenant between God and the earth, so Zechariah and Elizabeth now introduce the final covenant of grace, and the lines between them run unbroken--for no other reason than that the love of God did not break against human sin!"

How awesome! Then Wangerin brings it home, explaining that even this very moment (that very moment of me sitting and reading the meditation book) is weaved together with the past. God is the God of history and He has worked everything together to bring you here at this particular time. "You have been nurtured in love through all the ages unto this instant, this breath you are now drawing, this present beating of your heart, this thought, this faith, this prayer..."

As I pondered this truth this morning, I realized how apparent it was in my life. God is the God of history and he has used things in my past to bring me here at this very moment. If not for Ron (my pastor) suggesting that we read 5 Psalms each day of November, I would not have gotten back into the routine of having a daily quiet, meditation time in the morning. If not for my involvement in Young Life, I would not have received this book of meditations. (I received it as a gift at a Young Life banquet.) If not for my severe crush on Drummer Boy in 9th grade, I would not have gotten involved in Young Life. If not for my decision to join the high school band, I would not have met Drummer Boy. If I had any singing talent whatsoever, I would not have joined the band, but would have taken choir and art instead. If I had not auditioned for choir in 5th grade and had not been told by the music teacher (with much feeling), "You need help!", I would not have been aware and embarrassed by my lack of singing talent. And it goes on and on! Pretty cool!

I am amazed to realize that my utter despair and embarrassment at my 5th grade choir audition would bring me here to this instant. The God of history, working all things together for the good of those who love Him.