Celebrating His Resurrection

For many years we've intentionally shyed away from many of the traditional Easter celebrations--mostly because in the midst of the commercialism, many people seemed to have forgotten the resurrection of Christ. However, this year we realized that in our efforts to avoid the commercialism, we had also (essentially) forgotten Christ's resurrection. Easter had almost become a non-holiday in our home. We decided to rectify that. Easter celebrates one of the most important truths of the Bible--we want that to be important to our children. So here's a glimpse of some the happenings in our home last week ...

Decorations--compliments of Publix ...and Hannah. :)

Celebrating the new life we have through Christ ...

Easter cards for a friend who will soon be seeing his Savior face-to-face ...

Spring-themed Sugar Cookies ...

It was Matthew's first time really helping with cookies ... he liked the dough. ;)

White chocolate lambs ...

A resurrection reminder on our special dessert ...

Easter portrait ... compliments of Hannah :)

And an afternoon Easter egg hunt ... so much fun! :)

Simple things, but it has been good to remember.

He has risen, as He said.

Celebrating Jesus' Birthday

Christmas Eve morning, Hannah came to me with a conspiratoral whisper and asked if we could make Christmas Tree Cookies. Well, I had already been planning to make a special dessert with her for celebrating Jesus' birthday, so I punted on the original recipe, and we made sugar cookies. :o) I must say, multiple things made these delicious cookies MUCH easier than last year:

1. Peter was out shopping with Daddy.
2. Hannah and I used a sugar cookie mix I had picked up for almost nothing earlier in the month. Not only did it not have to be refrigerated, but it also made only 30 cookies. Much easier than 130!
3. I had a proper cookie spatula.
4. Hannah wanted Christmas Trees, i.e. we didn't need bells and candycanes and stars and every other shape under the sun.
5. Christmas Trees are green. And only green. This means we had ONE color of icing.

All that said, we had quite a fun morning making cookies while Daddy and Peter found last minute deals.

We turned the cookies into a "birthday cake" for Jesus. :o) (And I still have the ingredients for my other dessert which we'll make at a later time.) :o)

Christmas Eve dinner was a culinary delight of hot dogs and homemade macaroni and cheese. :o)

We also enjoyed opening our "table gifts"--growing up, these were special gifts you got to open up at Christmas dinner as your very last gift of the day. With just a minor adjustment, we've continued the tradition . . .

After dinner we read the Christmas Story in Luke 2 and sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. What a joy to keep Christ at the center of our Christmas celebrations!

We also made our annual trek to enjoy Christmas lights. Usually we just tour housing developments, but this year we enjoyed a special light show in the area.

I love this picture! They were fascinated by the glowing ribbon on the "gifts" in the sleigh.

And here's my two little snowpeople!

And after the kids were safely tucked in bed and sound asleep, Chris and I continued our annual tradition of bringing out the gifts and then taking a picture of us. :o)

And here's our littlest one at 23 weeks . . . :o)

Merry Christmas!

We pray that you also enjoyed a blessed day celebrating the birth of our Savior!

A Favorite Christmas Tradition

We continued one of our favorite Christmas traditions this year--attending the lighting ceremony at Bob Jones University. It's so much fun! The kids loved the lights and the singing. :o)


In family devotions, we've been working on learning all four verses of "Joy to the World," so Hannah was very excited to join in when it was sung as one of the last carols of the evening!


We even got a family picture this year, compliments of one the students who worked in Hannah's classroom last year. :o)

I love how the lights reflect on the water!

Joy to the world! the Lord is come:

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And heaven and nature sing.

He rules the world with truth and grace,

And makes the nations prove

The glories of His righteousness,

And wonders of His love.

Merry Christmas!