Christmas Memories

Evelyn knew Santa visited long before Christmas came. She saw his bags in Mommy's closet. She knew she wasn't allowed to touch the wrapped gifts, or Santa (Heigh-Ho-Ho) would take them back. So you can imagine her consternation when on Christmas morning she found the bags were missing!

She signed "Where" and asked repetitively "Ere dey go??" So we brought her into the front room where the tree was all lit up and this was her reaction:

After breakfast it's traditional for my family to dance to Mannheim Steamroller's Joy to the World. My mother used to wake us up on Christmas morning to this particular song blasting out the windows. I think anytime members of my family (Or my mom's immediate neighbors) hear this song, it's instantly Christmas morning. Here's Evelyn and Michael dancing:

Evelyn was at the perfect stage for present opening. She was young enough to still be thrilled with only the boxes and wrappings, but old enough to appreciate the real toys too.

We got Evelyn a "Heigh-Ho" and she immediately started singing the song when she saw it.

Then she very properly introduced Grumpy to her new baby-doll. "Heigh-ho? Baby. Baby? Heigh-ho!"

Over all, it was a perfect Christmas. Though Evelyn didn't quite get it all--when she went in Mommy's closet later in the afternoon, she still asked "Ere dey go?"

Christmas Challenge

Growing up, my mom always strove (Strived?? Striven??? oh well) to give us a Christ-centered Christmas. We would do Sub-For-Santa's, caroling at rest homes...anything to get us more service minded and thinking about the real meaning of Christmas. One tradition that lived through every year was our scripture memorization. Mom would collect 25 scriptures throughout the standard works and write them on little 3x5 cards. Then, every day we would memorize a scripture to count down to Christmas Day. She would entice us by giving us exciting rewards like a mint M&M for memorizing the scripture of the day! Believe it or not, that mint M&M was a real motivation! My siblings and I would strive to be the very first to receive our prize of honor. I'm sad to say that usually meant parroting the scripture back and not really memorizing it. I probably memorized the same scriptures year after year and they were only semi-familiar.
When my older brothers and sisters moved out and I become sort of an only child, scripture memorizing lost it's appeal for me at home. So I brought the scripture cards and the bags of candy to school and challenged my friends! After all, it was tradition and I couldn't give it up. In college I posted scriptures on the white board on my dorm room. I don't think anyone but me looked them up, not to mention memorized them, but it was still there.
Then I married, and believe it or not, a mint M&M didn't sound too appealing, and alas! Days started to slip by when I didn't even look at the scripture cards! I started using the same scripture cards year after year, and only the short ones were getting memorized...over and over and over again. So this year, I decided my little family needed to do something else to get Christ more into Christmas...at least until Evelyn can memorize scriptures and get excited over mint M&Ms.
So I thought of a new challenge. I know December is halfway over, but there's still two weeks! Here it is: are you ready?

Write a Carol or a poem to your King!

It has to be original text, but you can set it to existing music, or simply create a poem expressing your feelings about the Savior's Birth or Ministry.
I'd write mine here, but it's not quite finished....
Anyway good luck! And let me know if you're up to the challenge!

Evelyn's Graduation

The cause:

Evelyn has never climbed out of her crib before. Unless of course you count the time in that short little hotel crib when Michael turned on the shower and the sound scared her so badly, she did a back flip over the edge of the crib. But that doesn't really count. Yesterday before her nap was the very first time. I had no idea she had climbed out, so she ended up sleeping on her blanket on the floor next to her crib. I discovered her when she started jabbering and I went in to take her out of her crib. She was so proud of herself that she asked me over and over again to put her in her crib so she could show me again how she did it.

The effect:

She was so excited to go to bed last night. We didn't hear a peep from her. I went in to check on her to make sure she wasn't getting into any trouble, but she was lying in her bed with a big smile! She knew she was a big girl!

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

I apologize for the blurriness of this picture...Evelyn was running around doing somersaults and all sorts of cute 0f stuff, but I couldn't get her to hold still.