Christmas Celebrations

The Christmas celebrations are in full swing here! The kids choir sang on Sunday morning for the services so the kids got dressed in their Christmas Sunday best! They looked great! These are the 4 years- 1st graders. There are quite a few missing! I think there is a lot of sickness going around. The ones that were there did great though. They sang Happy Birthday Jesus and Baby Jesus.

Last night we celebrated Christmas as a family. We had ribs, cheesy potatoes, broccoli, lefse, flatbread, Jello salad and the traditional birthday cake for Jesus. I tried a new chocolate cake recipe this year and it was delicious!

We tried to start the candle tradition. A candle is placed in front of one family member and we take turns telling them what we appreciate about them. The kids did okay with this :) A couple of the responses told me that they were a little young to really appreciate this tradition, but we'll keep at it, and I think it will become a very special time. Of course they knew that presents were after that time so that didn't help.

Kaelynn is very into princesses right now and she got a Cinderella doll which she loved. She also got a princess learning laptop and an Easy Bake oven. The boys received a couple of DVD's, a Bible, and Razor scooters. Since we have hardwood floors, they've been riding them around the house because it's to cold to go outside :)

Another tradition we've started is to sleep together in the family room by the Christmas tree. The jury is still out on whether this is a good tradition or not. As I listened to the steady beat of snoring from all 4 of my other family members and coughing from at least two at 3:30am, I was wondering if we should rethink this one. I suppose it will get easier as they get older. I don't think any of us got a whole lot of sleep last night. In fact, I ended up getting up to fill the stockings at 4:00am since I wasn't sleeping anyways.

Yes, that's a big screen that we are watching The Polar Express on. The previous owners of our house left a projector and screen in our family room. At first I was very annoyed by this because it is big and ugly, but it was a ton of fun last night to watch the movie on. We also can hook it up to the TV and are thinking a Super Bowl party will be in our future for January :)

Kaelynn sporting the 3D glasses for the movie.

We are looking forward to spending time with family in Grand Forks and Minneapolis over the next week. That is, if we aren't snowed in. We're expecting 8-14 inches of snow and high winds in the next 24-48 hours. We pray you all have a wonderful time with family and friends. Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

CITR

CITR stands for Christmas In The Red- the musical our church presented last weekend. It was written by Andy, some of his staff and some other very talented people involved in the worship arts ministry at Bethel. We did 4 performances of it and it was very well received. We heard many comments about how it really hit home for a lot of people and how they wanted to bring all of their friends so they could experience it too. I don't tell you that to fluff Andy's head, but to show you how God used it in the lives of those who saw it. We believe that God is working in many hearts because of the message of Hope that was given to them.

The story followed two families who are neighbors- the Olson's and the Johnson's. One family's hope was rooted in God (Johnsons) and the other family's hope was rooted in their material things and status (Olsons). They find themselves faced with crises- a teen pregnancy (Johnson) and an economic downturn that takes all of their status and wealth out from under them (Olsons). The baby ultimately brings both families together and the Olson father (grandfather to the baby) in his despair, sees the hope that God has given us through Jesus.

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Andy with the orchestra. They were very talented and sounded great!

A picture of the Johnson dad and one of his little girls. This song happens right after he finds out his oldest daughter is pregnant and he is thinking about her being little again. It was beautiful!

This scene is a dinner party at the affluent Olson house. The scene ends with all of us (I'm in the middle at the table) getting cell phone calls saying the stock market had crashed and we had lost everything.

The girl is Alexa- the oldest daughter of the Johnsons and the one who has the baby. The man is the Olson father. In real life they are father and daughter. It was really neat to see them playing these parts together. The carolers at the end. This was supposed to be a trio but this night Andy was praticing with us to fill in for one of the guys that wasn't going to be there for one of the performances. That's why he isn't in winter attire :)

The kids did so well. We were very proud of them!

Getting ready for the show!

Sam and Oliver- Connor and Carson's friends who were in the show as well Some friends of mine!

Tim and Julie Martin and their three girls came up from Iowa to see the show and for a quick visit! We got to have lunch with them and they came to the show on Saturday evening. It was so great to have little piece of Iowa close again!

This was the scene on Sunday afternoon!

It's beginning to look alot like Christmas

Amidst the craziness we have found time to get our house ready for Christmas and I have loved it. I had a ton of fun last Saturday as I pulled a few things together (and bought a couple little things) to decorate the tops of our cupboards in our kitchen. We have two separate cupboard spaces that I decorated with the brown and blue theme. I found some great ribbon at Michaels for 70% off and I have most everything else. It turned out like this!! The rest of the pictures are not in order because I wasn't thinking very well when I was choosing them :) I love making gingerbread houses, but I have learned something about myself. I like them to look like the one on the box. When you decorate them with two 6 year olds and a 3 year old, they don't turn out that way. So this year I bought my own house and found a village for the kids to decorate, and it was perfect! Everyone got to decorate their own house and we put them on a cute platter. I want to get some snow or coconut, but this was the end result last Saturday evening:

We covet your prayers over the next two weeks for our family. We decided to have the kids in the Christmas musical with us. They don't have lines or anything, but will be on the stage as part of my family in the large group numbers. Andy has already put in sooooooo many hours and the next two weeks will be no exception. I am so proud of him and know that his heart is so full of love and passion to see people experience the hope God gives us through Jesus His Son during this time of year!

We will be at church every day next week until 10:00pm and I'm pretty sure it is going to be hard on the kids. Please pray for patience for us as we try to encourage each other and hold each other up during this very important and exciting event. This is an important part of the ministry that God has called us to, and we want to share this as a family. We have been praying with the kids that God would use all of us to glorify Himself and that He would bring His message of hope into the lives of those who come. They are starting to understand what that means and it is very exciting to see!

Stay tuned for some pics from the event.......

So much to be thankful for...

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year! Grandma from North Dakota came down on Tuesday to start the preparations. We made lefse and flat bread for the first time. I've been in the family for almost 10 years now and haven't had the chance to make it, so it was a real treat to experience this family tradition. The kids had a great time with it. Connor and Carson were in and out, but Kaelynn stuck with it for quite a while. She loves to help in the kitchen!!!

All the hard work of the two days before really paid off on Thursday! We had great food and a great time celebrating with family and friends. Grandpa and Grandma from North Dakota, Grandma Ruth, and the Bundy's all came over. The Bundy's are friends from church. Greta watches Kaelynn when I teach and Jonas is a pastor at Bethel with Andy. They moved to North Dakota in July from Texas and their extended family is in Wyoming, so we were pleased to have them celebrate with us!

Zoe and Grover are 5 and 4 and have a great time with our kids. The Bundy's also have another another boy Truett who is 1 1/2 years old!

Grandma has started a Thanksgiving tradition of reading a Thanksgiving book and acting it out with pilgrim and native american costumes. The actors did a great job and were very believable!!!

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We sure did!

Concert

Yep, that's Point of Grace and Mark Schultz with Andy, my mom, and I. The concert was at our church on Friday evening. It was a great concert! They all have amazing voices and amazing stories and awesome hearts! I've always loved Point of Grace. Their music has encouraged me many times in my life. One of their Christmas CD's is my all-time favorite CD. And to think they sang on the very stage that I sang on this morning. Okay, that's a little "crazy fan" sounding- I'm not that bad, but it was really fun to have them here.

Halloween fun

There is one main difference between trick or treating in North Dakota and trick or treating in Iowa. The temperature you are walking in. We layered as much as we could under those costumes and they managed to stay warm enough, but when you're dealing with 30 degree temperatures you can only do so much! They're little ears were pretty red when they came in. They had a lot of fun though! Kaelynn was a ladybug, Carson a soldier, and Connor a firefighter. They were pretty cute!!

In my day of trick or treating we were given one maybe two peanut butter kisses but certainly only one fun size candy bar per house. Now they are given 3-4 candy bars per house. Oh my goodness!! We have candy coming out our ears!!! I'm trying to think of creative ways to get rid of some of it. And not creative ways to consume them myself!!!

These are a few of my favorite things....

I love fall!!! I would have to say that it's my favorite season. I love the colors of the leaves, the smell of cinnamon anything baking in the oven, carving pumpkins, cool crisp air (although not too cold!), jumping in piles of leaves, and hot apple cider. We have been busy the past few days with fall activities. We carved pumpkins and roasted the seeds. Carson liked them the most. I have been eating most of them!! We finally have trees in our yard and we were able to rake up a pretty good pile of leaves to jump in. We made pumpkin shaped rice krispie treats. We shopped for Halloween costumes. The past couple of years we have put together things we had around the house, but I wasn't getting many brilliant ideas. Then I saw that K-Mart had all of their costumes for a really great price. Honestly I couldn't have made the ones we were thinking about for cheaper than the ones we bought!! Here are some pictures of our recent fall frolicking:

I don't know why the background of this picture is pink. I'm pretty sure that our camera is dying!!!

This activity was fun for a while, and by a while I mean about 5 minutes :) As soon as they got a whiff of that lovely pumpkin smell and felt the slimy pulp, they had had enough, as evidenced by Connor's frown. So I sat for 45 minutes by myself carving pumpkins. Good thing it's one of my favorite things!!!

Happy fall to you all!!!