For the wages of sin is death, 

but the gift of God 

is eternal life 

in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23

We rejoice in the hope that we have in this season and always. 

It is not a hope that we deserve or have earned.

We have hope because Christ came to earth to die for us and bring us into fellowship with Him!  

Joy to the World!

Christmas Outtakes

We've had our share of infamous Christmas memories.

Like the year Gavin was a toddler and sneaked downstairs before anyone else was awake and ate all the individual chocolates out of the advent calendar.

Or the next year when Maddie climbed onto the dining room table and ate the gingerbread house.

We've had kids open presents that were not intended for them and kids open presents early that were intended for them.  Then there was the child who got up in the middle of the night to re-wrap the presents he opened, in an effort to make right his wrong. 

One year we had hundreds of praying mantises hatch from our Christmas tree and cover the wall by the tree and the presents under it.  

I've even had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on one of my children on Christmas Eve, and the child was so disturbed by the incident that it ruined his entire Christmas!

This year has been mild in comparison, but we have had a few Christmas outtakes.

Try as I might, we could not avoid sickness this season.  Alaine and Maddie both caught a fever virus right after Thanksgiving, but it was mild and passed within 48 hours. 

Just this week, Macie caught a different fever virus.  She had a mild cold before she got a sudden high fever on Saturday.  She still ate well and actually slept better, both for naps and at night.  I thought  it might be roseola.  Her symptoms were textbook, and sure enough, she broke out with a light, lacy rash on Tuesday, confirming my suspicions.

Our medical concerns didn't end there.  Earlier this month, we were in the urgent care center when Macie scratched her eye (a corneal abrasion).

We were given antibiotic drops and a pain reliever and by the next morning, you almost couldn't tell it had happened!

We got several strange photos of Alaine in December.  Both of her top teeth were loose and instead of pulling them out, she played with them and let them dangle until they literally fell out.  We called her Nanny McPhee.

While my girls have had a wild month, my boys have stayed healthy and whole.

Gavin celebrated his 14th birthday a week ago.  He wanted no fanfare but had a blast when we spontaneously got a pizza to eat in the car while we were running errands.  Then he had a friend over to eat dinner, play chess, and watch crazy YouTube videos.  Maybe we would have had some funny outtake photos, except I forgot to take any photos at all.

We're moving into the last weekend before Christmas and we pray it stays free of sickness or injury.

The only downside is the fact that we've had four, yes four, separate invitations for Saturday evening and we can only accept one!

Unconventional Hospitality

In my most recent post about hospitality, I promised I had one more thing to say:

If hospitality is about fostering relationships, don't be afraid to accept other opportunities for community.

I guess that is a topic all to itself and not really hospitality at all, but it is important.  It doesn't have to be in my home with my food on my timetable to be meaningful.

Accept an invitation to another person's home.   Go to the park with another family for conversation and play.  Accept an invitation to meet up at a restaurant.   Go out with friends after church.

Immerse yourself in other people and their lives.

As we sink deep into this holiday season, remember to invest in more than gifts and decorations. Invest in people, too. 

Wednesday Through Sunday {in three words}

This is Wednesday:

crazy sous chef

making pumpkin pie

And now Thursday:

all six kids

and an outtake

two of us

gathering with family
{photo by Mom}

On to Friday:

choosing a tree

 this is it

mommy/baby selfie

lost a tooth

Saturday was Fun:

annual date day

💗our third wheel 💗

evening birthday party

Day of Rest: 

choir singing hymns

one more song

can't escape sickies!

Back to reality.

a Charlie Brown lunch

I talked about some happy Thanksgiving memories, but Thanksgiving 2014 will go down in our family history as a bad one.  On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Maddie woke up sick.  She had a slight fever and stayed on the couch most of the day watching movies, but by Wednesday lunchtime she was well enough to join us at the table.

Unfortunately, another kid woke up with a fever on Thanksgiving morning and a third developed one mid-morning.  Before cancelling the day's plans, we made a few calls to family who encouraged us to come to dinner anyway, saying they would risk exposure to germs since Maddie's case had been mild and quick.

Wrong move.  😬 On Friday morning we began putting up our Christmas tree and by afternoon, a full-blown case of the flu hit our house with high fevers, chills, sore throats, headaches, and body aches. This was the scene in our house while Brian was stringing the lights:




And despite all the festivity around him, this little guy only managed to put one ornament on the tree before he curled back up on the floor. 

It was bad.  Brian and I managed to finish the decorating before we succumbed, too, and it was days before anyone was well enough to cook dinner or go to work, let alone take care of the long Christmas to-do list. 

In those few hours between bouts of wretchedness that year, after Maddie got better and before aninyone else got sick, we made a happy memory.   On Wednesday afternoon, we served a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving lunch.

Today we did the same.  Today everyone is well and we are very thankful for it.

We popped some popcorn, toasted some bread, handed out gourmet jelly beans, and portioned out pretzel sticks.

Tomorrow we will feast on turkey and mashed potatoes, but today we enjoyed a few simple pleasures. 

More on Hospitality and Community {part 3}

This is part 3 of my informal series about imperfect hospitality.  Get caught up here and here.  



As we (my family, specifically, and maybe yours, too) prepare to welcome people into our home during the holiday season, it is important to remember that the house and the decor and the food are secondary to the people. Relationships are what hospitality is all about.  There are a few points I focus on to keep my priorities in the right place. 

• Kids are equally as important as adults.

It is easy to focus on our adult friends and relatives and forget that the younger people they bring along matter, too.

Sometimes it is fun to invite only kids over, too. This may be kid-led, like when my kids had a group of friends over for a movie party at the end of the summer.  (They plan to do it again the weekend before Thanksgiving--with even more kids this time-- 13, or possibly 17, kids, instead of 12!)

Other times we invite whole families, making sure the kids feel welcome, too, whether with their own table or a special dessert or activity.  

Mother's Day meal (2013)

Welcoming friends' children into our home while the parents go out for a few hours alone is also hospitality.

• The house does not need to be spotless.

It is so easy to let the house cleaning take over my brain.  I attempt to keep my house moderately clean all the time so spontaneous hospitality is possible, but when I have time to plan ahead, I have a hierarchy of importance.  The bathrooms come first.  (No one wants to use a dirty potty!).  Next I want the house straight and the clutter picked up.  If there is time, I vacuum and/or sweep the floor, specifically the main traffic areas.  Dusting and deeper cleaning (mirrors, wiping down the refrigerator, etc.) come last. 

Valentine's Day celebration (2009)

• Entertaining does not need to be complicated. 

Keeping people happy and entertained can be as easy as having a good conversation. Watching a sporting event together on TV or playing a board game works as well. We've hosted more than one Survivor party of the years, too.

football!

And though we don't want the food to take precedence over the relationships, sometimes food is the entertainment. Before they go home for the day, Brian and a single co-worker sometimes discuss what they will be eating for dinner. If a particular food gets a lot of talk, Brian tells me, and we make a point to invite his co-worker over next time we eat that particular dish. We've done chicken and dumplings, blackberry chicken, and cider beef.  We plan to do honey sriracha wings next (this recipe, substituting 4 tablespoons sriracha for the hot sauce).

• Talk about the obvious. 

I am terrible at small talk, not because I don't like to talk, but I have a hard time initiating conversation with feeling awkward.  I like to think about a few conversation starters ahead of time-- nothing gimicky and certainly not a script-- but I consider what our guests do for a living or what I know about them.

They say that talking about the weather is boring, but almost everyone has an opinion about the heat wave or the cold snap you are currently experiencing.  Everyone has opinion about whether it will be a snowy winter or rainy spring.  Weather conversations often lead to discussions of holidays or vacations or family traditions.  It is not a bad starter topic at all!

12 cousins with Grandma-- 1 missing + 2 born since the photo was taken in 2013

When we had a group of kids over recently, some of them did not know each other.  We played a quick ice breaker that even the shyest of kids could play.  I said, "Raise your hand if you are five," and then each child who raised her hand told everyone else her name.  We continued right up the line until we got to the thirteen-year-olds. (And yes, we had each age represented!)   I wouldn't recommend playing this with adults, but it was perfect for our group.  

Part 4, which will also be the last part, will address how I Promote Hospitality Unconventionally. 

In Twenty-Three Days

Is it too cliche to say that time is flying this fall?!  Growing up, my dad used to say, "Today is the 4th of July. Tomorrow is Christmas."   I am seriously in denial that Thanksgiving is a little more than three weeks away.  That means you have twenty-three days to get your hands on this book and read it to your kids, your grandkids, your friend's kids...yourself!  I'm being very honest when I say that I often check out books from the library for my kids because I want to read them myself!

throwback to Thanksgiving 2009

We have a tradition in our family on Thanksgiving morning.  Though I cook most of my Thanksgiving dinner contributions-- the cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and sweet potato biscuits-- on Thanksgiving Eve, I intentionally save the corn pudding for Thanksgiving morning. It only takes a few minutes to assemble, but it goes into the oven for 45 minutes and the aroma fills the house for much longer.  It is the smell of Thanksgiving for us.  When I bake corn pudding other times throughout the year, someone often remarks, "It smells like Thanksgiving in here."

While the pudding is baking, we watch the Thanksgiving Day parade on TV.  Sure, the televised version includes things besides the actual parade-- Broadway dancers, corny commentary, street interviews, and pre-recorded musical performances-- but we love it anyway because it says Thanksgiving to us and it is tradition.  My kids have never believed in Santa, but they still stick around until the end of the parade to see Santa come into town on his sleigh.

For my kids, the highlight of the parade is the balloons. They try to spot Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon, Greg from  Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Red from Angry Birds. They look for classics, too, like Snoopy and Sonic the Hedgehog and Buzz Lightyear.

We discovered Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade by Melissa Sweet this year.  Sweet is also the author of Some Writer which I read and recommended in October.  Both books have mixed-media  collage-style illustrations which I find fascinating and draw me in almost as much as the story {no pun intended!}.

Balloons Over Broadway is the biographical story of Tony Sarg, the puppeteer who designed the first large helium balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  The balloons debuted at the 1928 Parade and were not "characters" like many of the balloons are today.  These first balloons, controlled by men holding long ropes, were shaped like zoo animals. Sarg called them "upside-down marionettes."  Sarg continued working with the Parade and did eventually collaborate with Walt Disney to design character balloons, including a Mickey Mouse balloon which made its first appearance in 1934.

The book also details Sarg's background as a child who "loved to figure out how things moved."  This aspect resonated with me, the mom of just such a child. Sarg used his curiosity and ingenuity to shape his career.

This is not a new book.  It was published back in 2011 which ironically is when I published a list of Thanksgiving-themed books that we loved at our house that year...and still love five years later. 

Click the square below for more Thanksgiving books!

What are your Thanksgiving Day traditions?
Do you watch the parade?

Hospitality and Community, pt. 2

I mused about imperfect hospitality about a week ago and shared how it is so easy for me to come up with a list of excuses why it would be easier or better to avoid having people into our home.  I talked about why I've decided it is important despite my shortcomings and how our family fits guests into an already full schedule.

Today I want to take a few paragraphs to address one of my biggest hang-ups:
  How am I going to feed these people? 

The food

The food itself can be a big concern when you are pinching pennies (me!) or when you don't feel like a good cook (me, again!). I've found in most instances, guests want to help contribute to the meal so no one person is responsible for the cost or the planning. We hosted lunch guests this summer and ate simple dripped beef sandwiches with potatoes and a bowl of watermelon.  One family brought tomatoes from their garden to slice and another brought a pan of brownies. 

We had friends for dinner the day my water broke with Macie, too.  (What an adventure! You can read more about that here!)  That day I made ham and poppy seed sandwiches and our friends brought a fruit salad, and we ate before I headed to the hospital!

Another time we invited over friends with small kids so each family made two pizzas with a variety of toppings.  (I have a trick or two for baking pizza at home.) We baked all the pizzas in our oven and paired pizza slices with a big salad.

At the beginning of this month, friends came for dinner on a school night so I simmered a pot of  chicken and rice soup in the afternoon and made a pan of garlic and herb flat bread (a non-dairy variation of this recipe, using olive oil). One guest brought a salad and another assembled dessert and baked it in our oven after she arrived.  

We've also hosted people and served only snack foods.  I had a ladies' game party and offered desserts.  Ben invited friends over on his birthday morning and had donuts.

I served a walking taco bar to a group of hungry kids and teenagers. 

Feeding a crowd does not have to be expensive.  I employ a few go-to recipes that I am confident taste good and I use them over and over. (There are lots of food ideas on my blog if you dig into the recipe archives.)

Setting the table

Our dining room table holds eight and there are eight of us.  Macie uses a high chair so that only leaves one extra seat at the table.  Our solution is to serve the meal buffet style from the counter.  Usually the kids claim the seats at the table (often squishing in more than eight!), and the adults eat at the living room coffee table or on their laps.  Other times we switch it up and let the adults enjoy the table.  Once we borrowed a folding table and a few chairs so all sixteen people could score a spot at the table. 

And you know what?  If none of those ideas appeal, inviting just one person to fill that one empty spot at the table is still hospitality! 

What about the plates and glasses and silverware for extra people?  I bought an inexpensive set of white plates to supplement the dishes I already have. I use mix-and-match bowls and glasses, too. Nothing is a perfect match, but it all coordinates. Sometimes it is easier to use paper plates and plastic utensils. That is more than okay. Plus it eliminates the need to wash dishes when my guests go home

It doesn't have to be about food!

I always assume that hospitality equals feeding people, but if my goal is relationship, being together is more important than what we put in our mouths.  One spring we invited three other families over to dye Easter eggs with us.

Other times we've had people over just to talk and visit, or to take a walk.

...which leads to the next topic...

Who should I invite and what do we talk about?