Christmas Corners

It's Christmas time! What a wonderful time of year! I hope all of my friends are having a blessed and joy filled holiday season.

Obviously we've been quite busy here...or I would no doubt have posted sooner than almost two months since the last post! As usual, I am sorry for the long absence.

With a new home and town, we are having to find new traditions and ways to celebrate the birth of our Lord. It has been a little tough dropping old traditions, but fun too, to see what is here.

Mostly, we've stuck to the home. This year we haven't gone to any local things, but I hope to next year. We did enjoy making candy with our new homeschooling friends and of course have had fun making our traditional Sugar Cookies :-) Christmas music has been playing in the background and decorations have gone up.

One of the newest things for us has been lights on the house! Dan and I have lived in apartments all our married life until this year...so we've never put lights up on the outside..well, not even on the inside for that matter ;-) But we both felt the desire to have them on the house...so last Thursday(I know, late...) my dear, sweet, darling of a hubby set them up. We only did the front of the house and they are just a simple strand of white lights...but I LOVE them! I love the simplicity of them...just right :-) I just realized that this shot is a tad blurry..but I still think it gives the feel of the house at night :-)

Of course, it just wouldn't feel like home if we weren't able to put out the little decorations. I've gone about it slowly, but I finally finished putting everything out last week. We are still surrounded by moving boxes and haven't finalized where everything will end up in the future...but I like how most things turned out.

This is our front entry way...we have a large wreath outside on our door, but this little one graces our inside. You can also see a few of our snowflakes hanging from the entry that we made and our stockings(these are the ones that I made a year or so ago) and our advent calendar.

The other thing we enjoyed doing this year(something we have wanted to do since having children) is to take a trip to a Christmas Tree farm and we cut down our own tree. What fun...though it decided to start pouring while we were out there. It is the biggest tree we've ever had and a lovely(though crooked) one!

It was such a blessing to put out all of our ornaments this year. The last two or three Christmases we could not afford a tree or didn't have the space...so this was just sweet!

As you can see, Rowan is loving this. She has been such a good girl about not touching the tree since after the second day of having it. But she likes to look at the ornaments and point them out...especially the Winnie the Pooh ones :-)

The funny thing about this season...it doesn't matter how much you have or don't have, as long as you remember the great gift we received so many years ago and that we never deserved it. And that the love we show others...family, friends, or strangers...is but a shadow of the love God has for us, His children. Too often I feel lost in the busyness of the season...and then one of my sweet children run off with scissors and tape...to lovingly hide one more gift...and it just slows down and the simplicity I love so much is once again seen. The simplicity of love and grace and mercy.

I desire this week to share each day a snippet from my favorite Little House on the Prairie Christmases. These books have always clearly shown me a view of Christmas...well, life really...that I wish to have for my family. Contentment with little, joy in the difficult and love of family...beautiful to me every time I read these books. So I hope you will enjoy my little sharings as we head towards Christmas.

Lots of love,

Sommer

*edited to add: I just changed the poem in my Poetry Corner on the right to suit the season :-)