~Our Merry Christmas Season~

 I LOVE Christmas!!!  I love the sweet story of Jesus' birth from Luke 2 and from Matthew, I love the Nativity, 

I love Christmas trees, I love snow, I love hot drinks, I love the family gathered around a puzzle, I love reading Christmas stories together, I love helping others (our family tries to help several families with a small gift during Christmas), 

I love putting together Christmas tablescapes, I love sneaking and buying gifts for the ones I love, I love when the gifts are all wrapped up and under the tree, I love snugglin' with my sweetheart, I love candles, I love Christmas lights, I love Christmas baking with my children, and I love being together with those I LOVE!! 

Here is our Christmas season in pics.    

Jesus has given us a blessed December!

~In our dinning room.~

~I got Acrylic tags from Hobby Lobby and made name tags for our whole family to hang on my dinning room tree.  

(Kimberly printed off names onto a piece of paper. I placed the paper under the acrylic tag and I traced them onto the tag with a white paint pen or marker.  

Then I painted gold and black on the back of the tag to make the names show up. ) 

Then, I hung them on my tree. 

This is Chris and Kimberly's tags.~

~Sarah and Joshua~

~In my kitchen.~

~The little red and green cans in the window are olive oil cans from our time in Argentina.~

~Josh and Sarah came to see us on Dec. 4th, because on Dec, 5th our sweet Sarah turned 22!!  

Happy Birthday, Sarah!!

We enjoyed a few fun days together.  

We enjoyed watching this version of Scrooge, where he gets saved.  

It was put on by a church out West. 

Our dear friends, Kara, Bethany and Luann Boardman told us about it and sent us the fun video.~

~Sisters catching up.~

~On Tuesday, Dec. 6th Sarah and Kimberly went with us to the girl's piano lessons in Cinci.  

Since Sarah is the church pianist at their Church there in Crooksville, she wanted to run some ideas by Mrs. Martha Miller on playing hymns and specials.  

Sarah is doing a phenomenal job on the piano! 

Martha and I are so pleased with her playing! 

It was such an enjoyable hour together with all 4 of my girls and their dear teacher Martha. 

(Martha was my piano teacher as well!) 

We love her to pieces!!

~Then as the girls and I went to leave Cinc, we spotted this new coffee shop in Mt. Auburn.  

Since we used to live in Mt. Auburn, it made our hearts happy to think of a nice little coffee shop in our former neighborhood.  

So, we ran in and had some coffee and brunch together.~

~Mary, Abigail, and I made 2 ice cream cakes for our family for Sarah's birthday.~

~Our Church Christmas Dinner!~

~The 6 of us.~

~With Chris and Kimberly~

~With Pastor and Grammy!~

~A fun gift that I got at the dinner.  I shared them with my family the next day.~

~Phillip and I at the fun Butterbraid Christmas dinner on Dec. 8th.~

~On Friday, Dec. 9th, our family joined others from our church and went Christmas Caroling to some shut-ins in Fayetteville.  

Afterwards we grabbed something to eat together at Terry's.  It was neat to have the older saints with us!~

~Pepperoni and BLT~

~Our Bedroom all decorated for Christmas.~

~I wanted a white furry pillow for our bed, but I did not want to pay much.

I was so happy to find this fluffy white pillow at Walmart, MAINSTAY brand, for $5.00!!

~Our family draws names for Christmas.  We try to get our person a nice $30.00 gift.  

Sweet Sarah had my name this year and among other fun things, 

she gave me this Adorable Winter Wishes cup.~

~If you like Egg Nog, you should try it with Coke.  

(we are not pop drinkers, except at Christmas with eggnog. )

Pour the Coke in first, then the egg nog. 

(I poured the Coke in first, then the eggnog, and then I thought it was neat that the Eggnog went straight to the bottom.)

 It tastes like a Coke Float.~

~This popped up on FB as a Memory from my decor in Argentina.~

~For Several years now, Phillip has found after Christmas sales on Christmas lights.

This year, Dear Noah took the time to light up our house with those lights. ~

~Our Church Christmas Program.~

Practicing on Saturday.

~Our Abigail was Mary.~

~Then our family and Levi went to the Ark to hear GBS.~

~I took several thermoses of hot water and packs of hot chocolate, spray cool whip, marshmallows, and all kinds of snacks for after the GBS Christmas program.~

~The GBS Program at the Ark.~

~And I got to see our Bethany.~

~On Sunday morning, praying for a little girl from our church that was suffering physically.~

~Trint and Sons playing offertory.~

~Our Christmas Program.~

~Abigail playing Mary hiding baby Jesus under her scarf. ~

~King Herod~

~Noah and Elijah playing Silent Night for the offertory.~

~The Jim Benders took our family out for Christmas. We had such a nice evening together.~

~Going to See my Parents.~

The boys playing for Gram.~

~Abigail talked Mary into playing dolls with her.  

Gram has the cutest dolls and doll clothes that she and Grandma Bryan made.~

~Sweet Moma~ (I guess I failed to get a pic of Daddy.)

~Moma's Pretty Christmasy table.~

~Moma's yummy Baked Oatmeal with fresh fruit Breakfast.~

~Our Christmas card.~

~Abigail one Snowy Sunday.~

~Chris and Kimberly singing and playing such a beautiful Christmas special.~

~My Phillip and our kids love colored lights.  So, this year our living room tree was a fun colorful theme for them.  And since we had a huge roll of this paper left over from the table runners for Kimberly's wedding, we decided that we would use this as our wrapping paper this Christmas.~

~Abigail and Mary coloring~ 

~A Parfait and Quiche for Brunch.~

~We played instruments together quite a bit this Christmas.~

~Also in our living room.~

~Above our piano.~

~A dear Church sent us some money for Christmas, 

so we finally got to take our whole family out to a restaurant for our Annual time of  

Thanking the Lord for calling us to be missionaries.  

We normally do this in February, but due to 2 weddings in one year, we didn't have the money back in February. :-)  

(But we wouldn't trade those 2 new Son-in-loves for anything!! :-) 

While we are out, Phillip always reads some Scripture and gives us a Challenge to keep Shining our Lights for Jesus!!~

~All together at Church again.   

Since Josh and Sarah pastor in Crooksville, this is one of their first services back in  our church. 

How sweet to worship together again.~

~It got freezing for some nights.~

~Peppermint Bark.~

~Decorating sugar cookies together.  Sarah found a wonderful Sugar Cookie recipe that has become a new family tradition to make and decorate.    Best Sugar Cookie EVER  inkatrinaskitchen.com   

(I do not use the almond extract, just put in additional vanilla.)

~JOY TO THE WOLRD...and THANK YOU, SWEET JESUS, FOR A WHITE CHRISTMAS!!~

~Mary did this sugar cookie to represent our time in Florida this past May.  

It is the ocean, sand, and red flip flops.~

~Noah did this cookie with a Christmas Globe with a Nativity inside it, and a cup of hot chocolate out front.~

~Mary did this cookie.~

~Chris did this cookie with his CK brand.~

~The boys came in all covered in snow from jumping on the snow-covered trampoline.~

~My little wooden "happy" sign that makes me happy.~

~Noah working on a puzzle while Josh and Abigail play a game of checkers.~

~Our Christmas!  

Since Christmas was on Sunday, and since Josh and Sarah had to leave for a little while on the 24th, we decided to open our gifts on Friday the 23rd.  

We have never even opened our gifts on the 24th, so this was new for us.  But it worked out great. ~

~Abigail got a bike.  She had very much out-grown hers.~

~One of the Christmas puzzles that the family put together this year.~

~Kitchens are for family to gather.~

~the 2 sweet couples hugging.~

~Sledding in the beautiful snow that Jesus sent us.  

Mary had been PRAYING HARD for a WHITE CHRISTMAS!! GOD IS SO GOOD!!~

~One Frozen little Abigail.~

~Playing pencil nose.~

~I love still having a little in our house at Christmas!~

~Our Christmas Eve table.~

~CHRISTMAS DAY!!~

~Reading Luke 2 and having devotions together.~

~Singing Christmas carols while Abigail and Mary took turns playing the piano for us.~

~A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM OUR HOUSE TO YOURS!!!~

~Christmas afternoon we got all bundled up and went Christmas Caroling to a few of our neighbors that were either shut-ins or lonely.  

We took our Christmas Card and some goodies.  We found at least 2 neighbors that had family that was sick so they were alone on Christmas Day.  :-(. 

~Here we are with Sweet Mrs. Dorothy!  (she is between Mary and I.)

How we love her!  

She reminds me of my sweet GG pictured below.  

Of course GG is now in Heaven, so Jesus gave me Mrs. Dorothy. 

:-) 

~My Sweet GG and I.~

~Dear Mrs. Dorothy and her sweet daughter Kim dropped these 2 yummy treats by yesterday.  :-) ~

~We did our Stockings on Christmas Day.  

for the stockings, I normally get bags of dried fruits like apricots and mangos (our family loves them), 

dark chocolates, pickles, olives, hot sauce for Phillip, gummies and some candy for the littles, etc.

~Our creek froze over so our 3 middle kids went ice skating.  

They had a blast.  

Phillip (who ice skated a lot in MI) warned them not to go in the parts of water that they knew was over their waist.)

~Our Christmas Dinner.~

A new to us yummy Green Bean Casserole.

~As Always, I had a Blast setting our table!!  

(Hint for cheaper table linens I highly recommend 

HomeGoods.  I got these dark green napkins there for nearly $1.00 a piece.  

That totally beats places like Kirklands.  

Of course, Hobby Lobby sales are wonderful as well.)

~I "undecorated" my Dinning Room Christmas tree ;-) 

so I could put a Christmas ball and my acrylic name tags that I made on each plate. ~

~I love little Christmas trees!!  

I also LOVE the saying, 

"IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR!"  

Something about that saying just gets me "Jumping up and down happy" inside!

~Years ago my Moma found these "Christmas in my Heart" books and got them for my Daddy.  

Thru the years he has read them or loaned the books to us and Phillip has read them to our family.  

Such neat, happy, or tear-jerker Christmas stories!! 

This year I was able to go on Thriftbooks.com and I found the first 5 of these books for CHEAP!  

I prayed that they would get here before Christmas, and Jesus answered my prayer!

We plan to continue to read them throughout January.  

I highly recommend them.  

Of course you stumble across an occasional story that we might not agree with, but for the most part they are such sweet Christmas stories. ~

~This pic popped up on FB the other day.  

Those are my 2 little girls from a few Christmases ago.~

~I saw this AMAZING recipe for Gingerbread Latte Cookies with Brown Butter icing the other day. 

 I whipped it up in my Bosch mixer and it DID NOT DISAPPOINT!!

These are delicious dipped in Coffee!!!!

www.halfbakedharvest.com/gingerbread-latte-cookies/

~My Oldest Brother Andrew and his sweet wife Vonnie 

(Praise Jesus that Vonnie is still with us, after her horrible fall in September) and their twins came by for a few FUN hours!  

I made Cappuccino punch, a cheese ball, packaged soups, and other snacks, along with an assortment of my cookies...and we played lots of hilarious games.  

~We laughed so hard while playing games!!~

~We got a table top ping pong set for Elijah for Christmas.  

So, brave me, I am letting them play in my dinning room.  :-) 

~What a sweet verse.  

May we Love Jesus and each other!!~

~HAPPY NEW YEAR!!~

~HEATHER~