Schleich Nativity up close & personal

Last year for Christmas my sister (Hey there, Sis!) gave our family this wonderful Nativity set.  If you have any Schleich animals, you know what this is like.  It’s like a hard rubber.  AKA indestructible.  With my kids, that is important.

I had forgotten about it, until we pulled out the Christmas decorations yesterday.  The kids were excited all over again.  And this set always makes me smile.  Let me introduce you.

The Holy Family.  And Wayne Brady. 

Here’s various pictures of the magi/shepherds/livestock.

  

I didn’t realize that the Amish had a community in Bethlehem.  I also didn’t realize some of them have taken a liking to the smoky eye.  Watch out Adam Lambert.

This cracks me up.  Look at her face.  It looks like she’s thinking “I just had a baby, in a barn & now all these people are in here?!!”  Well, to ease your mind Mary, things haven’t progressed much in this area.  Nurses, Interns, Lactation Consultants, In-laws, heck even Janitors hang around during most births these days.  But now we have drugs that make us not care so much.  I guess that is progress.

 

Joseph looks, well… a little… stoned here.  That’s all I’m sayin’.  Maybe he took all of Mary’s pain meds.  Give that man some cheetos.

And here’s our star.  As a mom, that baby looks cold.  Everyone else has on cloaks and robes and the Savior gets a loincloth.

  But, all cynicism and sarcasm aside, this is really the point of it all.  That He would humble himself to such a low place in order to make a way for us.  And that is what makes me smile every time I see this Nativity.

 

 

*ps*

I just wanted to show how small this really is and what a kickin’ micro setting I have on my camera. 

What is your favorite Christmas Decoration and the meaning behind it?  Come on.  You know it’s not your favorite just because it’s cute. 

A lesson on Thanksgiving

 

My oldest son is reading books for his History and English parts of school.  One of the books he read was The Landing of the Pilgrims by James Daugherty.  So for a “break” today, I asked him to come up with a lesson from the book for Livy & Gabe.  He read a chapter from the book then had them re-enact it.  With props.  It was great.

I don’t think you can see it, but they are harvesting and shucking paper corn. (Please ignore the vacuum in the other room.)

 

Davy is explaining the animals and how to kill them with the beads he provided.

 

“Stay there, bear.  Let them kill you.”

He made all of the props himself out of construction paper.  He tapped the creative portion of his gene pool.

Livy is aiming and throwing the beads to kill the paper animals.

Look at the rack on that deer.  Can you tell the boy loves hunting?  I think that’s his dream deer.

 

“Let us give thanks for our paper meal.”

“Now, dig in!”

They rounded out the lesson by telling things they are thankful for.  Family, food and dog were in the top 3.

I’m thankful for 3 things as well.  Can you guess what they are?

Crime Scene Photos

This picture causes me great pain. If you're squeemish, look away!

Stupid squirrels...grrr...

Ten Ways to Write a Collge Essay

1. Know about the assignment for weeks, even begin research, but wait until the day before it’s due to actually start writing it.

2. Choose a day when not only all four of your children are out of school, but also invite adorable 3-year-old niece and 9-year-old nephew to join the party. Also at different times during the day, open your home to your other nieces and nephews (too numerous to mention & yes, they’re all adorable too) who live in the neighborhood.

3. Make sure your 5 year old is definitely still feeling the effects of a busy Halloween weekend and is generally just a grumpy tale.

4. Add a house that is honestly a WRECK and the fact it took over an hour just to clean the ‘work area’ (which of course had to be moved to a different area due to all the distractions).

5. Catch up on emails, facebook, and twitter to just be sure you’re not missing anything while you’re slaving away on your research paper.

6. Set a time to start essay and stick to it, then change the time due to lunch, almost done cleaning the kitchen, and finally due to another out-of-town niece’s visit (she’s 23 and I loved spending a couple hours catching up on what’s going on with her).

7. Volunteer to bake goodies for the school’s Election Day bake sale. Don’t just volunteer cookies or brownies, offer to make those AND some hot dinner rolls and challah bread for the second shift.

8. Drink a Mountain Dew and eat French fries and nuggets w/ the kids at lunch. Cover your fries in cheddar cheese, sprinkle the fairy dust of the food world on top (if you don’t watch Jim Gaffigan—you should), and then liberally douse with some ranch dressing.

9. Feel miserable about your lunch choice and eat salad for dinner (although go ahead and add all the aforementioned toppings…it helps my mind stay creative).

10. Drink a cup of coffee at 5:30 while soaking in the tub, have a hot chocolate around nineish, and finally another Dew at 11:15. Finish some semblance of the required 750 words at around 12:30, stumble into living room, make son go to bed (he fell asleep watching the Series), watch Jimmy Fallon’s monologue, go to bed. Get up at 7 a.m. and try to figure out what in the world I was scribbling at midnight….oh and have another cup of coffee.

How’s that for an endorsement for going back to school?

Awww..who am I kidding? I am loving it (except the research paper part and the fact I may gain 20 lbs from high calorie beverages...hee hee).

Want more Top Tens head to Oh Amanda's! The list on coffee inspired me this morning.

Halloween-y or Hallowon’t-y

This is us 2 years ago.  A fabulous Children’s Pastor decided to do trunk or treat.  Can you guess who that was?  It was Daryl, Pam or both of them.  I’m not sure who comes up with ideas & who decides, but they started that ball rolling.  It was AMAZING!  We had such a turn-out.  And fun was had by all. 

Here’s my van UFO.

See the alternate Alien family in there.  Yup, that’s Davynoo, Livboop, & Gabeleck.  My third eye is losing it’s lashes, but that’s ok.

And this is our car last year. 

Well, you can’t see the car.  Hannah & I were hanging out in the cargo area of the suv.  In case you reside under a rock & haven’t seen the show, I’m Lola Luftnagle, Lilly’s alter ego.

I guess I showed you all that to tell you how much fun I have dressing up and how much I get into that part of Halloween. 

There has been a lot of chatter on the Jesus Blogs I visit about this subject.  Churches doing alternative parties, people shunning Halloween altogether, letting your kids trick or treat, the Scare the Hell out of sinners outreach programs and so on.

I love trick or treating. 

There I said it.

When I was growing up, Halloween was just a fun time to dress up and get free candy (and a possible trip to the hospital to have it x-rayed).  That’s it.  It was spooky, but in a fun way and we at it up.  Literally. 

Our church had a Haunted House IN THE CHURCH when I was little.  Not an outreach, but a fundraiser.  And not your benign spaghetti noodles as brains and grapes for eyeballs stuff either.  It was dark with fog machines, strobe lights and screaming soundtracks.  I’m sure there was more, but I can’t remember it all.  I do remember being assigned the spot under Dracula’s coffin to grab people’s feet as they came closer for a good look.  Yes, it was a real coffin and a real Christian dressed as Dracula to lie in the coffin.  Gasp!  Oh, the Horror!

AND I trick or treated as a kid.  Almost every year.  I loved it.  Costume planning was a big deal.  Come to think of it, it still is.  Did you see the pictures? 

There was the one year I couldn’t trick or treat because of Mono.  I was devastated.  As devastated as you can be at the tender age of 8 when putting the cat in the fridge & wearing a slip as a veil for pretend weddings in the hallway are your best pastimes.  (Yes, I did both of these, one more than the other.)

So I couldn’t trick or treat.  What did I do?  I handed out germs candy.  I’d like to do a case study to find out if a Mono outbreak occurred just after Halloween in Lake City, SC that year.

That makes me wonder what all of the poor kids with swine flu are going to do this Halloween.  Should we run candy under those blue lights they have in the nail salons?  Probably not a bad idea.

Here comes the main point.  My kids have never had a true trick or treat experience that they remember.  My oldest was the cutest superman in the Naval Base housing when he was 1, but it’s been Harvest Festivals ever since.  I love Harvest Festivals but I do feel like my kids have missed a great experience.  And the fact that we don’t have anything going on at our church frees them up.

So this year I have decided to take them trick or treating.  The downtown neighborhood were we live is prime real estate for it.  Gabe wants to be a football player.  Olivia is probably going as a flu kid with pjs & a flu mask.  Davy said he wants a shirt with “COSTUME” on it.  I love that all of these are either free or super cheap. 

I’m curious.  Do you feel strongly either way?  What do your kids want to dress up as?  And most important, what’s your favorite thing to sneak from their stash?  Mine is the Caramels.

The One With the Painted Pumpkins

I'm such a non-crafty, non-home decor kind of girl but I'm attempting to change this. Actually I'm struggling, mightily. And in the spirit of trying to prove this, I'm posting my latest challenge here for all the world (well, for the two or three people who read this) to see.

I saw someone else out in the blogosphere put their house numbers on their pumpkins...so ca-ute! (Sorry for not giving credit, I get a little click happy sometimes and I just keep going and going and I have no idea where I started or where I end up.) I attempted it. I love them! My favorite part is they are painted and if I can keep the stupid squirrels from vandalizing them the pumpkins should last through Thanksgiving.

I also love my authentic apple crate. It's from a local company which makes me love it even more. The name is Wm. H. Boaz, isn't that just fantastic? Why? I don't know, it just is!

So the grand scheme is to get a couple of mums (my budget ran low--darn kids think they have to eat--before I could get them last week) and some corn stalks to finish the 'vignette.'

Here's the full view:

I keep switching the pumpkin in and out of the crate. The goal was to put the mums in the crate, but again, darn budget.

Here's a close up of one of my punkins:

And here they are without the crate....hmmm...

So whatcha think? Got any ideas for how to place them more attractively? Any other unusual fall additions you'd suggest? Any thoughts on how to keep the stupid squirrels from destroying my pumpkins? I prefer cheap or, even better, free options, but all ideas will be appreciated.

So tell me, what's up with you this fall? Attempting anything new or different?