MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

A very merry Christmas, y'all!!!! I hope you had a wonderful day with your family!! I know I did.

Being that none of our extended family lives remotely close to us; we had a nice quiet Christmas at home as a family. It was lovely being together without any appointments to meet or places to go. I would tell you more but we are getting ready to watch Frozen and eat dessert. So once again, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! Here is a song I forgot to add to my playlist the other day.

The Heart of Christmas by Matthew West

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

Isaiah 9:6

My Favorite Christmas Playlist

One of my favorite things about Christmastime is the music :):) I am not one of those people who by New Years is tired of all the Christmassy music. Now I am sure there are some settings where I could possibly get tired of it but I have yet to discover any of those ;)

Here are  "a few" of the songs I have been listening to this season.

Silent Night by Celtic Thunder

This is a beautiful and unique rendition of Silent Night. It is standing in the place of O Holy Night by Celtic Thunder which is my all time favorite this season. Emmet Cahill's version easily blows away Josh Groban and Celine Dion's versions. On the Celtic Thunder Symphony concert Emmet O'Hanolon's rendition of the song absolutely blew everyone away!! But unfortunately there is no YouTube video for me to show you :'(

Christmas Can Can by Straight No Chaser

This is a fun, silly christmas song :)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel by the Piano Guys

This song is hauntingly beautiful and I love it when it is played by the cello.

Mary Did You Know by Celtic Thunder

I never really paid any attention to this song until I heard this version now it is one of my favorite Christmas songs!
P.S. I apologize for the pictures in the video but it was the only one I could find :/

Feliz Navidad by The David Crowder Band

I am not a fan of The David Crowder Band but they have my favorite version of Feliz Navidad :)

 

The Christmas Shoes  by Newsong

This song makes me want to cry every time I hear it.

Christmas in Dixie by Alabama

This is for all you country music fans :):) I discovered this song this year and it perfectly describes how I imagine Christmastime in the south :)

Winter Wonderland by Celtic Thunder

This is my song every time it snows around her even if it is only a few inches :)

 Last but not least.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year/We Wish You a Merry Christmas by Celtic Thunder

What are your favorite Christmas songs this year?? Are you tired of Christmas music yet?

What People Really Need For Christmas

When we were at Cracker Barrel one time on our last trip I found a chocolate bar with a wrapper that made me laugh.

If you can't read what it says,
"Things we really want for Christmas:*
1. World Peace
2. Muscle Tone
3. Clean Laundry
4. Money Trees
5.Super powers
6. Self - acceptance
7. Toe curling love
8. A few do overs
9. Tropical Vacations
10. Healthy Gums
11. Weight Loss
12. One of Everything
13. Happy Families
14. Perspective
15. January

*But most people will settle for chocolate.

It amused me because it had a point. What we really want you can't buy, wrap up and put under a tree. But we will settle for lesser things and act as if it is the best gift ever. If we did have all those things do you think we would truly be happy for the rest of our lives?  Probably not because vacations end, laundry will get dirty, muscle tone will go away and we will only be able to stay away from food we love for so long. The truth is that there is nothing in this world big or small that will make us truly happy forever; not even life long, true love. There is only one thing that will bring us life long happiness and joy.  Christ Jesus. He has promised that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  In Him we have our true peace and joy.  After all, it is His birthday we celebrate at Christmas.  So as nice as clean laundry, muscle tone, and true love is, all these are just temporary extra blessings we might enjoy here on earth.  What about you?  Have you found true peace from your sin?

P.S. This post was written with the help of my brother, Sean :)

15 Days till Christmas!!!

Christmas time is in full swing over here. Hannah has decorated our house in a beautifully festive way. We put up our Christmas tree on Sunday. Christmas carols are almost constantly playing and Mom has an advent calender that she uses every day to teach Nathan and Elianna what Christmas is all about :):)

Also my wonderful, lovely, amazing sister turned 17 last week. You all already know how much I adore her. For her birthday she went to Starbucks and had chili cheese fries for dinner :)

Anyways here are the pictures from my photo challenge. I have been doing my photography course with the New York Institute of Photography and I have learned alot already. So hopefully you will see an improvement in my pictures soon ;)

 Something Cold

 Something I Made

I made these butterscotch popcorn bars for church on Sunday. I think people liked them because they were all eaten ;):) They were pretty simple to make just I really dislike working with hot sticky marshmallow goo. I had forgotten that till I made these bars :) 

 I am working on my food photography right now and this is my favorite one I have ever taken!!:)

 Ornaments

 Something Furry

This is our newest cat Williamsburg (Will for short) He is sooo sweet and is Hannah's baby. He was not impressed with me putting a bow on his neck and taking pictures of him :)

Christmas Baking

What is your favorite Christmas activity? Do you have a special holiday treat that you make every year?

The Trip in Review

     Ok, so I just finished organizing and going through my pictures from the trip. There were not nearly as many this trip as past trips but that definitely helped my post-trip sanity.

      On my last post about the trip I think I left off as we were getting ready for the conference. I did. So I will start there.

      The conference was great. We heard alot of good talks and met alot of beautiful people and became reacquainted with old conference friends. 

      It was also very cold there and I mean VERY cold. Walking to the breakfast room one morning on the day it snowed I was the coldest I ever remember being in my life. But it was awesome to see snow again. 

      The very first day of the conference was a men only meeting so Mom took Han and I and the littles to the Ashville farmers market. It was huge! We had alot of fun there.

 

      The conference center is very nice and very accomidating for lots of fellowship. There were some lovely rocking chairs next to the vendor's hall.

 As I said, we heard lots of great talks in this room.

       There were two breakout sessions. Mr. Houston spoke in one of them. His talk was on evangelism and it was really good. It was probably my favorite of the entire conference. R.C. Sproul's on Justification was second.

 The meal times were great times for fellowship. And of course food lines are always fun ;):)

      Daddy flew home after the conference and the rest of us went back to Grandpa and Grandma's house.

      My cousin Madden was baptized while we were there. It was really neat. It is wonderful to see someone so young profess faith in Christ at such a young age.

 We are a big happy family plus some ;);)

Clay is awesome!!! He is my buddy no matter what Hannah says! So there ;)

 It was so great to see Nora again. She got big while we were gone!! Why do babies do that??

      

It was really too cold to go to the beach while we were there but one day we went to collect shells and fly kites.

     Han and I spent several days with Aunt Alana and Uncle Spencer. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Han and I even wrote a song about it :) We played Uno Stacko, watch Chopped and the Paradise, made wedding plans with Uncle Spencer, made meals together, prepped for birthday parties, listened to music really loud and talked alot. It was awesome.

Their heater wasn't working so we all had to huddle under blankets ;)

      On Memorial Day Grandpa and Grandma took us to the USS North Carolina. It was an important battleship during WWII and now is a museum. It was really cool. It was also neat to tour it with Grandpa who knows all about WWII history and ships :):)

 Those guns in the background (the things with the white tops) were huge. When they would fire the whole ship would shake!

 Hannah is looking forward to graduating so that she doesn't have to do the student worksheets at museums ;) I enjoyed myself greatly not having to do those things!! :) Oh the joys of graduated life ;)

      Blake celebrated his 5th birthday while we were there. (At Grandma's house not at the ship) Hannah made his cake and I think it is one of her best to date. And that is saying something because she has made some lovely cakes.

 

I have an awesome extended family. We are very loud and very active and we laugh alot. We argue over really weird things such as the color of baby Nora's outfit (I am pretty sure half of my family is color blind) and how to say "roof". But we all love eachother dearly.

One of the biggest highlights of the trip for me and Hannah was the Celtic Thunder concert on the 18th. Celtic Thunder is pretty much mine and Han's favorite singing group and they were coming to Charlotte for their Christmas Symphony tour. We bought tickets in September and walked dogs everyday to pay for them :):) Grandma, Mom. Han and I drove to Charlotte and Han and I were hyper to say the least ;)

Unfortunately Grandma got sick on the way there and so she wasn't able to go :(:'(. The concert was amazing though!!! It was sooo cool hearing them live!!! Han and I had an absolute blast. That is all I will say about it though because otherwise  this post will be WAY to long. (I wrote a 3600 word description about it)

The next day Elianna celebrated her 2nd birthday. I can't believe she is 2!!! I mean, I vividly remember the day she was born!! She had a very fun birthday celebrating with all of her cousins and she got a Pooh cake ;)

 Grandpa loves his grandaughters :)

 The little boys had such a fun time playing together and Paige is never to be left out of the fun :)

 Elianna got a tut tut for her birthday from Paige.

It was awesome to have so much family time together!!

Sadly we had to go home because Daddy missed us :( We pretty much drove straight home with a person getting sick each day. Thankfully the sickness was only a one day flu. But still flu and crowded hotel rooms can make for some sleepless nights : /  We did visit the Hermitage while we were in Tennessee.

I don't really get homesick when I am on trips since I am with my family which is what makes my house home. But I do miss people back home alot and wish they could share my experiences with me. And on Sundays I always miss my home church very badly.

I found this Peanuts comic that sums up my thoughts on homesickness and missing someone.

All in all it was an awesome trip. We made many memories, learned new things and explored new places. But as always it was nice to be home.

 We came home just in time for Thanksgiving and were able to spend it quietly at home together.

Wednesday's Words to Remember:Prayer

23 Days till Christmas

Day 2

  Glitter

Day 3

Something Red

I also found a picture of a christmas tree that I forgot that I had taken. This is the Christmas tree at Tenaya Lodge. We went to their Christmas tree lighting last week. The tree was really tall and beautiful when it was all lit up.

25 Days Till Christmas

      Happy December Everyone!! It is now officially the most wonderful time of the year ;);)

     I decided to try to do another photo a day challenge this month. 

This one is called 25 Days Till Christmas.

     Today I was supposed to take a picture of a christmas tree. Since we have yet to set up our tree or our decorations and no one around us has set theirs up either; I had to break out my non existent artistic skills and draw my own christmas tree :) :/