Verse of the Moment

"Thanks be to God for

His indescribable gift."

2 Corinthians 9:15

December 5th

December 5th marks a day of much fun in our household. I know that for most of you it is probably just another day in the month of December. For us it is the day that St. Nick comes and brings all of the Christmas presents. That's right, it is not Santa Clause that comes to our house but St. Nick, the Dutch Santa Clause. This is what I grew up doing and what we have carried on with our girls.

This year our evening started with dinner out together. Then we made some special deliveries of our own. Then we came home to wait for St. Nick to come.

This is Macaylee just as we got home from dinner. In this snow suite, daddy calls her "his little pink marshmellow".

First we placed our wodden shoes outside our front door.

then we waited ......

and waited.............

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Then there was a knock at the door! We rushed to the door in hopes of catching a glimp of Him.

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Here is Maddie trying to get the front door open.

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You see, St. Nick and his helper Swarta Pete, leave the gifts in a burlap sack by the front door, knock and run away. We were not able to catch a glimpse of him this time, but there is always next year.

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Then we had fun unwrapping and playing with our gifts!

P is for......

Each week we try to cover a letter of the alphabet and this week's letter was "P". Here is some of what we have been up to this week!

Having Pancakes On Paper Plates In Our Pink Poke-a-dot Pajamas.

Coloring Our "P Is For Pig" Coloring Page Out Of The ABC Coloring Book From Flipflops & Applesauce. This Is A Really Cute Coloring Book! You Should Check It Out.

We Read "God's Wisdom For Little Girls", And Talked About When God's Little Girl Is Priceless, Prepared, and Prayerful. Such A Sweet Little Book!

Painting Puffed Up Paint On Our "P" Another Something From Flipflops & Applesauce.

And We Hope To Read This Book When We Are Able To Get It From The Library.

Our Ballerina

We have a little ballerina in our home. Madisen has been wanting to take ballet classes for a long time! A few months ago I discovered a dance school just a couple of minutes from our house, with reasonably priced classes, so Chris and I decided it would be a good time for her to start. She started a few weeks ago and has been greatly enjoying her class. She has her first Christmas performance next week. What fun that will be!

This Morning .......

.... we woke up to snow! It was just a few inches, but so beautiful! It is that time of year. Christmas is in just a few weeks. Time to light up the fire place and listen to Christmas music. Our days have been full of a lot of Christmas music.

I love Christmas music. Each year I enjoy adding a new Christmas album to my collection. I have been trying to decided what Christmas album to add this year, but I have been coming up short. There is so many Christmas albums out there, but which ones our good? I was hoping to get help from all of you who read this blog.

What are your favorite Christmas Albums?

Here are a few of our favorite Christmas albums.

Steven Curtis Chapman

All I Really Want For Chritmas

James Galway's

Christmas Carol

Celtic Woman

A Chritmas Celebration

Thanksgiving Tree

I have been wanting to do something with the girls leading up to Thanksgiving. We have been dealing with "little" ungrateful hearts lately, so I wanted to do something with our girls that would help them see all that we have to be thankful for. I came across this idea from Flipflops & Applesauce. I liked the idea but wanted to make it more visual for the girls, so I came up with our Thanksgiving Tree.

I cut the tree out of a big sheet of brown craft paper. I used one of these leaf cut outs for our leaf pattern and then made a little sign with a verse for us to memorize together to put at the top of our tree. At each meal leading up to Thanksgiving we each write one thing that we are thankful for on a leaf, and tape it to our tree.

This has made for wonderful conversations at meal times. The girls usually want me to read to them all the leafs that are already on the tree and then we talk about what they want to put on their next leaf. I am looking forward to Thanksgiving when our Thanksgiving tree will be full of leaves listing all of the blessings the Lord has given us.