Christmas is happening. We have snow and ice here, festive parties, gifts mostly purchased, some gifts wrapped, Christmas cards to address, Christmas carols are being sung, concerts attended, Pageant rehearsals, cookies to bake (hopefully), menus are planned...on and on!
If I don't stop to blog our Pre-Christmas happenings, I know that I never will once I am bombarded with the million of photos I will take on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.
A friend of ours from church does a Gingerbread party every year and we LOVE this party. She has a huge room in her house that she leaves empty all year until Christmas when she lines the floors with plastic, has long tables, chairs, boxes to be covered with graham crackers, bags and bags of white sticky icing and bowls and bowls of candy. She and her husband get such joy out of this party. You can tell how much they love it! It is truly every kids dream. We love to take our kids there because it is very freeing, meaning they can't really do anything wrong. Their gingerbread house is their own creation. Scott and I love this party almost as much as our kids.
Here are our creations:
Our entire gang (we had Lillian too)- It was raining candy at Lillian's house!
Claire really got into her teacher gifts this year. She really wanted to make hot cocoa mix. We went to great lengths to get all the ingredients: Dutch processed cocoa, powdered milk, powdered sugar and a pinch of cayenne pepper made our mix a one of a kind! I packaged it up with one of those popular coffee cups and some candy canes for stirring. I was really pleased with how they turned out. I hope our fabulous teachers enjoy them!
I hope you and your family are not going to crazy in the hustle, bustle of Christmas. It really is a fun time of year if you take time to enjoy it. I am typing that trying to remind myself of it! Our pastor reminded us a couple weeks ago in our sermon about how Jesus was really a fun guy, he enjoyed food and a good party. I think we can remember the manhood of Jesus at Christmas as well as him being born a baby. I think he would have appreciated the joy and wonder in my children's eyes as they viewed all those bowls of candy at the gingerbread party and I know he would love dutch processed cocoa. All that to say that because of his birth as a baby and his death as a man...we can live as FORGIVEN this holiday season. That is a true cause for celebration, don't ya think?!
