Christ-Centered Christmas

DECORATIONS

This year we focused on Christ throughout the whole season.

We started with the decorating- tons of nativities inside and a big one outside.

(I showed pictures in previous posts)

MUSIC

We sang a lot of Christmas primary songs and hymns throughout the month.

We learned to sing "Silent Night" in 4 part harmony and 

went caroling to the nursing home where Donny's mom was recovering.

We had a tender experience in one of the rooms- we sang to one elderly lady

as her family gathered to say good-bye to her in this life.  She died that evening.

We also caroled to many of our neighbor's and Donny's home-teaching families.

We love to sing "Mary's Lullaby" and "Shepherd's Carol" because they have such beautiful harmony.

I learned to play an awesome version of "Let there be peace on earth" on the piano.

BOOKS

We read Christmas stories every evening together for "family reading."

Here are a few of our favorite Christmas books: 

The Mansion, Good King Wenceslas, and "A Christmas Treasury for Latter-day Saint families"
I also read through the 4 gospels throughout the month.
(Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John)
Christmas morning for family scripture study we
had each child hold up a picture and tell a story from Christ's life.

MOVIES
Every Wednesday and Saturday we had family movie night
so we could make it through all the Christ-centered movies we could find.
Here are some of our favorites:

ACTIVITES
Christmas Eve we had Grandma Anderson and two other women in our ward
over for a turkey dinner and a meaningful evening.
We read Christmas stories by the fire,
played Christmas bell songs,
and acted out the nativity story (written by Sadie)

Christmas Day we went to temple square to see the temple and the lights.

GIFTS
We gave our neighbors homemade wheat bread with a note
about how Christ is called "the bread of life"
and that he was born in Bethlehem= "the house of bread."

We gave our kids food storage items that they wanted.

(That was their idea after going two months living off food storage)

Myriam and Sadie did buy some fun toys for each kid as well.

Breakfast was in their stockings- oranges, apples, bananas, cereal, nuts, and gum.

SERVICE
I made it a goal to work on family history everday in November and December.
Donny and I took a lot of family names to the temple in Nov & Dec
and were able to go twice with my parents over the holidays.

Family Pictures

Today is Benson's 3rd Birthday!

My baby isn't a baby anymore. 

He is going to be a sunbeam in 2 weeks!

I adore him so much- he has become my right hand man 

during the day when my bigger kids are at school.

I am so grateful Heavenly Father has sent these children to Donny and I to raise.

They are such valiant spirits.

This Christmas I have been disciplining myself to tack a really hard piano solo-

"Peace on Earth"- and practicing the hard parts has been time consuming, 

but so rewarding because they sound so magnificent when played right.

I also develop so much skill when I am working on those hard parts.

I realized that my harder children are developing my skills and will be 

so rewarding when they are refined.

Food Storage Christmas

After going two months without shopping,

we learned where we needed to improve our food storage.

This year for Christmas, our kids decided to each ask for one item of food storage to buy in bulk.

Yesterday as they sat on Santa's lap, 

he was surprised and delighted to hear our little children asking for 

peanut butter, green beans, applesauce, macaroni and cheese, etc.

Nativities

Since last Christmas, Donny has been accumulating Nativity sets from the D.I., ebay, etc.

He drew, cut, and painted a large set with our boys throughout this last month

for displaying in our yard.

Yesterday when we got them all set up throughout the house 

it created such a wonderful feeling in our home.

The girls helped me decorate our tree so beautifully this year.

I usually am a grinch about our Christmas tree because it has never been beautiful.

(We can finally put ornaments all the way to the bottom- 

I think our kids are old enough to leave the decorations alone!)

Cousins Thanksgiving

Brook, Jenie, and I got to be together this year for Thanksgiving.

We are a month apart in age (our mothers are all sisters).

We were so close to each other growing up.

 Brook was in town from Mexico (Where she has lived for the last 7 years).

She purposely made her visit stay through Thanksgiving 

since she usually misses out on such gatherings.

Thanks to my amazing aunt LaVon who was willing to host 50+ people.

Look me in the Eyes

I recently read a book called, "A House United" by Nicholeen Peck.
The biggest lesson I learned from it was how to train my children in listening/responding respectfully.
Whenever I give them an instruction or consequence or a "no answer" I have them
1- Look me in the eyes with a calm face
2- Say "O-K"
3- Go and Do the thing I asked
4- Report Back to Me (so I can check and praise them)
She also a teaches that they should have a respectful way to dissagree.
The way that we do it is after they say "O-K" they may ask if they can make an appeal.
An appeal is an option they think is more fair (not a disrespectful complaint).
I then consider their option and re-decide.

If they can't look me in the eyes with a calm face, I send them to their room for time-out until they can come and look and listen and respond respectfully.  (Time out isn't the consequence, it is the calming down location)

This has really helped me to not get angry, but to communicate clearly and calmly.
It has helped the kids be more respectful and more responsible.
(The return and report has really helped them do things top-quality since they are so accountable)

Sunday Marbles

We have 1:00pm church this year and boy has the morning been full of chaos. Everyone used it as a time to go after their obsessions rather than doing anything worshipful. Sadie had an idea to have a marble cup that we fill up by doing things that are the "Lord's Work" to earn a Sunday church movie. Once it is full, they get to watch a church movie until lunch.  The sooner they get it full, the longer the movie. They have gone crazy indexing, reading the friend, practicing church music, working on personal progress/faith in God goals, coloring church pictures, watching "music and the spoken word," etc.

Grading Behavior

Family Scripture Study was getting to be a real strain on the spirit as I tried to fight against all these little "natural mans" who wanted to sleep, mumble, bother their siblings, etc. I realized Satan was winning the battle- he tempted each child in their own way so that the spirit was strained and we learned practicallly nothing and mom felt drained and mad. I needed to find a way to encourage reverence so that we could really learn each day.   "Reverence invites Revelation"

A couple of weeks ago I had a bright idea to "grade" them on their behavior at family scripture study and family prayer. The reward is homemade cookies made by Sadie on Sunday night. Their behavior is DRASTICALLY different now that it is measured and we are learning tons each morning.  "When performance is measured, performance improves!"

Windows of Heaven

We have felt the Windows of Heaven pour out a blessing upon our family this month.
Donny saw an unusual way of earning money that he had never considered before.
He was buying Myriam a set of bagpipes off the internet and realized he could buy and sell more of them through e-bay. He is having way fun doing it and that extra "cushion" of money will help us be able to feed our family with a little more "flex" room while still keeping our goals of paying off the house extra fast, saving/investing, and buying all depreciating things with cash.

(Elder Bednar recently taught in conference that the Lord blesses us for living the law of tithing in ways we may not recognize- such as finding job opportunities where we had not yet considered)

Gratitude for the Harvest

We decided to save money by spending no money in September and October and live off our harvest and food storage. It has been a fun challenge and we have learned new skills (like yogurt and cheese making with powdered milk). We have also learned where we could improve our food storage (like milk, eggs, meat) and we have recognized God's hand in our lives as he has poured out blessings through our garden and fruit trees.

This is our fridge after a month and a half of no shopping.

(The bottom half is full of carrots)

Doesn't look too scanty, though!

CAMPING WITH COUSINS (Tony Grove)

 

We started off the Anderson reunion this year at our house.

Donny's sister and niece (Kimala and Lee) stayed with us for a week prior to the campout.

This is a picture of Sadie and Myriam helping  Kimala sew curtains for her school classroom.

We LOVED mingling with them, as always.

They are so helpful and easy going.

This year the biggest lesson I learned from Kimala was to do the things that are "needful."

There were moments when I was cumbered about with work and she helped me realize that

sometimes it is the right "order" of things to leave the house or yard "out of order" to focus on people.

 Donny loves camping at TONY GROVE.

He books it 6 months in advance and hopes to find family to join him.

This is Donny with his brother, Mike.

 

Donny already has Myriam converted to fishing.

They only caught weeds until the morning we left, though.

They made us a delicious fish lunch, which I even liked... and I don't like fish.

The boys were phenomenal at keeping the fire going constantly.

The girls (and Tanner) kept the campground filled with music.

Sadie brought up her ukelele.

This is Meagan and Bridgett singing a beautiful duet.

This is Tanner playing the little violin Sadie gave him.

Sadie and Bridgett borrowed a boat and canoed around the lake. 

 The kids loved playing "Wackie Six" in the Trailer

Donny got a group to play Bocce Ball with him.

There is nothing like camping with family!

So much time to just focus on each other and pull away from the world for a while.

I loved it when I was a child (we had "Stout Camp" every year) And I love it as a mother.