Family Traditions

Both Dan and I grew up opening gifts on Christmas Eve. We went to our Christmas Eve service and then presents were opened. When we got married, we kept up the tradition. Last night we went to the Christmas Eve service and then home to open gifts.

When we celebrate Christmas with my family, our Christmas morning, whether it be on the 25th or another day is always celebrated with the same menu....great grandpa's coffee cake and egg casserole, so our morning went the same way. I know that in a few weeks, we will have the same menu when we are in Nebraska. Dan's family does Oyster stew on Christmas Eve. Dan is the only one of the five of us who will eat it, so hopefully mom Jordan will have it when we get out there next.

The coffee cake doesn't picture real well. Many of you have had it, but for those of you that haven't it is wonderful. My great grandpa was a German baker. This coffee cake has a thick layer of butter cream in the middle. There is a reason that I only make it at Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas

May you have a blessed Christmas with family and friends. We will be staying in Iowa over the holiday season. We will spend some time in January with my family at my parent's new home in Nebraska. (If the weather holds up) Hopefully, we will get out to Wisconsin some time to see Dan's parents.

Merry Christmas!

Snowed in

Today was to be our Christmas Cantata, but we are stuck inside with frigid temps and blowing winds. In town where we are, we are fine. Dan drove over to the church this morning without any problem, but we have many people out in the country who cannot get in to town. (our music pastor being one of them) Our Christmas program will now be in January. Ok, a little anti climatic, but hopefully it will still bring people in. We had to cancel last night also as the road that our church is on was not closed, but recommended not to be travelled. Hope that you all are warm and cozy in your homes. I guess that we will have a white Christmas!!!

Christmas time

I love Christmas! I love to pull out all of the decorations. It may be a chore, but after I get started, I truly love it. Kirsten and I can be a little crazy this time of year. We fall in love with every snow man that we see in the stores. We also love to paint them.

Moving into a new house has allowed us a different place for our things. It has been fun putting them up. We had an open house last Saturday, so everything had to be done by then.

Snow day continued

With two teenagers and one pre-teen, I am not always sure that they will "play together" nicely, but this afternoon has been nice while the kids play outside. What a great day for kids. The plow has dumped a huge pile right below our tree, so the kids (with lots of rules from mom) made a tunnel. Yes, my daughter loves to pose for the camera.

snow day 2

Our second snow day. This is new to us. As homeschoolers, I didn't do snow days as I didn't like make up days. (Of course, Kirsten and I still did school today.) Clear Lake doesn't let off school until Tuesday, so this cuts into Peirce's final schedule.

Mitchell and his friend, Mark, playing in the huge pile in our front yard.


I do love snow. Snow makes me remember God's love. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow..." It is such a picture to me. Living up north, I can't imagine a winter without snow, it is too gray without it. I will try to not complain about the cold---it is a necessary evil.

Our snow dog, Punkin. She loves to explore on a warmer day (20 degrees) like today.

BRRRRRR!!!!!

It has been cold here for a while, but Sunday gave us a new appreciation of what cold really is. Sunday morning was 38 degrees. Beautiful morning! The sun was shining. when we walked out of church at 12:30, it was 19 degrees. We had purposely moved our children's Christmas program to 4:00 as there was a possibility of some weather.
When we got home it was freezing, and we awoke to -30 wind chill. People here keep asking me if it was cold in South Bend. Yes, it got cold there, but the wind here is absolutely amazing. That is why we have wind mills all around here.
Well, I need to go pick up my boys from school. They usually walk home as we are only 2 blocks away, but today is 4 degrees, and the wind chill is way below zero, so I will be a nice mom, and go get them.
Stay warm! I am going to sit by the fire tonight!!!

God's protective hand

Have you ever wondered how many times the "circumstances" of life have protected us from something? I don't know if we will ever know how many times God has protected us from harm, but we got to see it first-hand last evening.
We had our pastors and wives and the elders and wives over for a Christmas dinner. We've done a few dinners like this. We all pitch in. The food is always great, and the fellowship wonderful. Last evening we were getting ready to go out caroling when Dan and our music pastor's wife noticed that a napkin had caught on fire from a candle on the table. They were able to stop it from causing any problem other than a cheap tablecloth being lost. On looking back over the evening, we saw God's hand of protection as we were to have already been gone by that time. One of our couples arrived at the house late due to "circumstances" of their day. Kirsten would have been in the house by herself if our plans had not been changed. She was up in her room playing when all of this happened. (I know that you are not supposed to leave candles burning, but their were so many people in the house that I don't know if I would have thought of it as it had not come into my mind before that.)
I was so thankful that it had not done any damage, and that we were able to catch it. I just shudder to think what would have happened had Kirsten been alone when it happened.

First Snow Day

A winter storm hit yesterday afternoon causing schools to close early and cancelling all of our evening activities. We woke up to a two hour delay which changed to a closing. We had a busy day........ All afternoon we mixed, rolled out, cut out, baked.....

frosted and sprinkled. We made mollasses cookies, snowball cookies, and Oma's white cookies. MMMMM. I am tired, but I have cookies put away for our open house on Saturday.

Christmas by the Lake

The first weekend in December is always Christmas by the Lake in Clear Lake. Everyone has told us so much about it since we were first here last January. So yesterday was another new experience in a small town for us.

The youth group sponsors a live nativity in the City Park. I didn't get pictures. It is sort of funny watching the shepherds and Mary and Joseph walk around with snowpants under their costumes----a little bulky.

There are carriage rides, trolley rides, chestnuts roasting by an open fire (Yes, really), Santa's village, and more going on downtown during the day. In town there is a wonderful organization called Opportunity Village that helps mentally handicapped adults of varying ability to get to their fullest potential. They have a wonderful ministry to a few thousand individuals, and many people in town and in our church work there. Opportunity Village does their annual fundraiser this weekend also. They have people in town donate decorated Christmas trees. These trees are on display, and people buy them. It is a beautiful walk through their gym to see all of the lighted trees from 2 feet tall to at least 8.

At 5pm when it is getting dark, the downtown streets are lined with people as they wait for the lighted parade. There weren't as many people as the 4th of July Parade, but for a very cold December night, I thought that there were a lot. The Youth Group, again, does a float, so Peirce was in a shepherd costume walking down the street. (He was on the other side from us.)

After the parade, come the fireworks over the lake. Beautiful!

This lasted about an hour. When we got home, Dan started a fire in the fireplace, and I made grilled cheese sandwiches---yummy.----Life is good!!!

7th Grade Basketball

Mitchell had his first 7th grade basketball game the other night. He has played Upwards Basketball the last 2 years. The wrestling coaches tried to get him to wrestle here, but basketball is his game. He really enjoys it. He has never been on a winning team, but maybe this year will be the one. They have 24 guys out for the team, so they have an A team and a B team. When we play schools that have enough, the guys will play two games. Mitchell is on the A team and is surrounded by good ball players. A parents fun part of the game was watching my son score the first basket. They won solidly. We'll see what other teams they come up against.

It is fun watching your children find the things that interest them. A few of the guys from 7th grade are from our church, and a few more have been coming to youth group on Wednesday nights. This has been exciting as each week we pick up some of the boys. One of them likes to come over here. We're praying that he will see God in our home. We're not perfect, but we will show him God's love.

Simple Elegance

Last night we had a ladies' tea at our church. This is something that they have done in the past, but it has not been done for a few years. A few months ago, the three pastor's wives decided to host this. We had a great amount of help. It was fun seeing how ideas of past times and places could morph into something new. We took ideas from what was done here before, added some ideas from teas in PA when I was there, and put some new spins on them both.



We had ladies sign up to decorate tables, so we ended up with 18 tables that each had their own china and identity. We decorated the room with tulle, white, lights, and some greenery in order to not clash with all of the colors. We asked ladies to put unscented candles on their tables for a wonderful atmosphere.



The theme of the night was Simple Elegance. The idea behind this was that most of us love to have a fancy evening out---thus the Elegance. The simple was to get our hearts and minds back to simplicity. This time of the year is so hectic. We had a simple program with some music and readings. I've got a lot of pictures as I took some of each table(actually, my husband did), but we'll see what we can put on here today.

The slideshow to the right is of the tea. There are pictures of all of the tables. Some were harder to photograph than others. They were all different and beautiful.