I got to be the one to record the Come Follow Me devotional that airs today, Christmas Eve. (You can find it in the Come Follow Me Foundation app, which if you don’t have yet, I can promise it would be a good addition to your collection.) I showed this painting as part of my…
We left the hotel in Cancun in the wee hours of Christmas Eve morning to get home to Elle and Carson who were arriving a couple hours before us. That light in the Houston airport (layover) was so incredibly beautiful bringing in that holy day. We arrived to our rainy, foggy desert (after the most…
We had two kids home for Christmas. Our two older kids were tucked safely with their in-laws, and Grace is tucked safely as a missionary in Texas. It was strange to have such a small group, but also a little bit awesome. Oh, we missed our other kids with all our hearts, but there was…
It is overwhelming to be a mother at Christmas-time. So much to gather and prepare and so many thoughts to organize in my brain. Every year it makes me appreciate my mother exponentially more. How did she calmly and quietly do so much, never asking for praise or acknowledgement? I don’t remember any grumpiness or…
How’s that for a long title? Ha! But I wanted to take a minute to talk about my very favorite part of Christmas every single year: children-gift-exchange on Christmas Eve. Can you see how excited Claire was to give this gift to Lucy years ago? Ok sorry had to include a few more. Because it…
On Christmas Eve day, intermixed with the stuff I wrote about in the last post, we prepped for our Jerusalem Supper, round 2. This time with a little more intimate group. And back to our traditional chicken tikka masala and one-piece-of-the-nativity-on-each-person’s-plate dealio that the kids instigated a few years ago. (Lucy sets the table and…
I don’t know how I will ever sum up all that has happened during this last week. There have been some frantic moments. Sleep lost. Things forgotten. Crises averted. And crises rolled with. But overflowing bounteously over all of that have been magical miracle moments where I have been washed over with more love and…
After our traditional Christmas Eve at home (last post), I gotta admit we got a little frantic about finishing the mad collection of supplies and packing up to get to Ecuador for the real-deal Christmas Eve. We worked with the other family coming with us to pack and weigh everything we had gathered for the…
We are back in the land where you can throw toilet paper down any old toilet. Ha! That is a blessing I hadn’t really thought much about until spending two weeks in Ecuador. There is nothing like a great adventure to help you appreciate the little things at home that much more. I felt kind…