Ponies!

On Christmas Eve we got to do something new!  A friend of ours with a daughter around Katie's age invited us to take the girls for a pony ride!  There's an equestrian center nearby and it turns out that with a little phone call and a nice tip you can ride a pony for a half hour and explore the center.  We weren't sure how Katie would like it but she did great!  It was also good exercise for the parents walking next to the little ones making sure they didn't fall off!  

Here is Katie and her friend on the ponies and the nice gentleman who takes care of the ponies.

He's Here!

Nope, not our baby - did I make you wonder??! 

But Jesus is here!  We finished our Advent Callendar on Christmas Day with the arrival of baby Jesus.  The girls really enjoyed this Advent Callendar project and we'll definitely be doing it next year (just remind me to start it on time, ok?).

I'd like to make some changes in the pictures since poor Mary and Joseph are quite cut and pasted - or find a whole new set - but gererally this worked great!  Below is the text that we read every day.  It is an adaptation I found on someone else's blog originating from Noel Piper's Noel Callendar.  I've never actually seen the original text but this worked great for us.  I changed a few things based on the pictures I had to work with.  No pig, a cat instead, etc. 

By the way, there are 3 camels - one is just VERY small!  I envisioned them walking in a line but Katie thought the wisemen needed to ride ON the camels.  Ok, no problem, right? 

Here's the text in case someone else is interested in using it.  Rememeber that every day you start back at Day 1 and add to it.  Halfway through Katie was already reciting the begining with me.  "Jesus is the greatest present of all!"


The Christmas Story
DEC. 1 Jesus is the greatest present of all. Long ago, God made a promise. He said “O Bethlehem… from you will come one who is to be ruler over all.” In Bethlehem, there was a stable for the animals and a MANGER, filled with hay…
DEC. 2 … for the animals to eat. There were animals like a CALF…
DEC. 3 …and other animals living in the stable like a PIG…
DEC. 4 …and a DONKEY…
DEC. 5 …maybe there was even a HEN looking after baby chicks…
DEC. 6 … One day the animals had a big surprise. A woman came to stay in the stable. Her name was MARY, and she was going to have a baby – very soon!
DEC. 7 Her husband JOSEPH was with her.
DEC. 8 Out in the fields near Bethlehem, there was a SHEPHERD…
DEC. 9 …taking care of his SHEEP.
DEC. 10 Maybe he had a DOG to help him.
DEC. 11 The dog would run round and round the SHEEP so they wouldn’t get lost
DEC. 12 along with other SHEPHERDs to protect the sheep from wolves.
DEC. 13 In the sky, there was a very special STAR
DEC. 14 Far away, a WISE MAN saw the star and said “This is the sign that a special king has been born.
DEC. 15 …I must find him and worship him. I’ll bring him a royal gift of GOLD.
DEC. 16 So he quickly got on his CAMEL ready to travel
DEC. 17 …and he brought along another WISE MAN.
DEC. 18 …who had a gift of sweet smelling perfume called FRANKINCENSE, for the king
DEC. 19 He came on his CAMEL
DEC. 20 …and the third WISE MAN wanted to go with them too.
DEC. 21 So, he prepared a gift of special oil, called MYRRH, to give to the king.
DEC. 22 When he had packed his bags onto his CAMEL, all the wise men set out on the long, long journey to find the king that God had promised.
DEC. 23 One night, an ANGEL of the Lord appeared to the shepherds. The angel said, “Fear not. I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord and lying in a manger.
DEC. 24 Suddenly, there was a multitude of ANGELs, praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.”
DEC. 25 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the BABY JESUS lying in the manger. And when they saw it they went to tell people about the best Christmas gift ever. Since you and I are sinners, we were separated from God who is perfect. Jesus didn’t want us to hurt or strive to pay for our sins so, Jesus died and rose again to conquer sin and give us a clean heart. Jesus is the best Christmas gift that we could receive. Praise the Lord that He loves us and came as a baby in a manger on Christmas day.

Birthday Girl!

OK, so December is a busy month for our family so I have a lot of catching up to do!

First - Our Katie turned 4!  We celebrated with some of her friends and then we took cupcakes and (by special request from her teacher) chocolate chip cookies to share with her classmates at school.  It was fun to celebrate our sweet girl!  It's amazing how grown up she is already...

Pin the nose on the snowman!

 Opening Presents!

Lots of new toys!

 This little one loves her big sister!

 Two-sided birthday present - perfect for sharing!

Waiting for the goodies at school!

 Happy Birthday to me!

 Such a big girl!

Happy birthday, Katie-bug!  We love you so much and we're so proud of you!  It was such fun to celebrate YOU!

Advent

I have to admit that I am rather proud of myself that I actually thought about doing something for Advent leading up to Christmas this year - before December actually started! 

Now that our girls are getting a little older I want to make sure to build some family traditions that really point to Jesus as being the reason for Christmas.  All of the other stuff is fun but I don't want the real meaning of Christmas to get lost in all the rest.  So there's one main, significant thing that we're doing and two just for fun things to go along with it. 

For the girls I got the 99 cent chocolate advent calendars from the grocery store and they are LOVING getting a little piece of chocolate every morning. 

Try explaining that we want to actually see their faces, not the boxes of candy.  Oh well!

 I was super excited when I heard about this as a Christmas gift for Jonathan.  You might not know this but my husband still loves Legos - and this is a Lego advent calendar!  He gets to open a new figure or piece to build every day - how fun is that?!  Katie loves getting to see what's in each new box every day.  It's pretty cute to see them playing together. 

I'm am very blessed with a terrific husband who also happens to be a wonderful father...

This is the more serious - point us all to Jesus advent activity.  I got the idea from a book called Treasuring God in Your Traditions and then I saw several blogs of moms who have adapted it to their little ones. 

The idea is that we started with an empty stable and every day we add a new piece to the scene.  Every day you reread the parts for the previous days so the story keeps building.  It starts with, "Jesus is the greatest present of all..."  I wasn't able to find a scene that had the number of pieces needed to cover all of the days so I quickly improvised by getting pictures from one of our kid's Bibles.  It's not exactly the set I'd love to use forever but it's working great for now. 

 Here we are on day 8 - waiting for Jesus!

Praying that these sweet girls understand the real reason for all of this celebrating!  Jesus is the greatest present of all!!!

What a Fun Surprise!!

This afternoon a large - and heavy! - package was delivered to our door!  Only Carly was home so I made myself have the restraint to wait until Jonathan and Katie got home to open it up.  I'm so glad I did!  It was so much fun!

Our adopted Sunday School class from one of our churches put together this wonderful box full of birthday gifts for the girls!  It was such a sweet surprise!  I wish I had pulled out the video camera because their squeals of excitement were SO cute! 



Fruit Snacks!  And Gold fish Crackers!  These are GOLD over here!!!

 Carly settled in and tried realy hard to get this bag of M&Ms open by herself - hillarious! 

 Cute shirts, crayons, markers, colored penicls, coloring books, hair bows....

 A new My Little Pony!  It's on a scooter!  She's in love!

 A new movie!!

 It's hard to see Carly's face here but she was SO excited!  She kept saying, "What is it? What is it?" and "Wow! Wow!"  So cute!



So, thank you BBG for loving our girls so much!  They were absolutely thrilled!  You made our day!  You made our week! 

Birthday Girl!

Our sweet Carly turned 2 last week! 

Here are a few pictures of fun times celebrating the birthday girl!!

She was quite focused when we sang Happy Birthday.  She had a very serious look on her face!

Big sister didn't mind helping her blow the candles out!

She was only interested in the frosting!  It was good, if I do say so myself!  She handed me the cake part of her cupcake and said, "here you go" once she cleaned the frosting off.

 Say cheese!

Carly is a sweet little girl and we're so thankful to have her in our family!  She is full of spunk and energy and she never seems to stop moving.  She's definitley learning how to make her opinions known and try to get what she wants!  She's a ton of fun and makes us laugh every day and keeps us on our toes!  We love you, Carly!!!

Tummy Shot!

Oh this poor neglected 3rd child!  I'm 27 weeks pregnant and last week I took the first tummy shot of this whole pregnancy!  I think I took one every month with Katie!  But I figure, I'm a 3rd born and I turned out alright so this little man will do fine. 

With the big sisters!

My pergnancy is going well so far.  My doctor is great.  She's the same one who deliviered both of the girls so I am very comfortable with her.  When I had an appointment in September I asked her when I should come see her again and she said, "Oh, I think you could call me when you start having contractions and we'd be ok."  Nice!  Don't worry, I've seen her once since then and I'll see her again in December so we're keeping things regular.  It's just nice that she is not a stressful person to deal with (as a lot of medical professionals here have been - in my experience!). 

One thing that has been interesting now that I'm very obviously showing is the reaction from people here that we're having our 3rd child.  Most families here have one maybe two children.  And they're often spread out with a big gap in their ages.  Partly it's financial and partly it seems like it has become cultural to have small families.  This seems to be a trend all across Western Europe. 

So now people see me walking around with my two cute girls and I often see them glance back and stare at my belly.  It's pretty common for people to make comments too, not just stare.  "Wow!  3 children!  That's a lot of work!"  I even had an elderly woman at church pull me aside and tell me very seriously that we really needed to stop after this one.  She said that it's just too much work.  3 is enough.  And she encouraged me to go home and seriously think about what she said.  Wow!  That's pretty bold!

I've mentioned before that poeple here are just more blunt than us Americans (at least Southern Californians) tend to be.  It's not unusal to have people comment on your weight or how you look.  I had a friend ask me what happened to my hair when I got it cut too short a few months ago.  I just don't think we'd say those kinds of things to each other in So Cal.  We're too worried about being polite and not stepping on toes.  I have to say, I wouldn't mind if people worried about stepping on my toes a little more over here!  I'm getting a little tired of the looks and comments and the baby isn't even here yet!  But I guess that I'd better get used to it because it's not going to change! 

We're very excited for you to come join our family, little man!  Even if you'll make us stand out even more!