This has been a great week of love, laughter and friends and you all know how happy that makes me. Choosing to take it easy during December has been a really great decision and we are reaping the benefits every day.
Last Friday evening we began what we hope will be a weekly Keepers of the Faith Club. We are doing it with Lorna’s family. Lorna is taking the older girls for their Keepers of the Home, I will be taking the younger two for a simplified version of the Keepers of the Home whilst Gary and Andrew (Lorna’s husband) will be taking the two boys for their Contenders of the Faith. The children will have a book each from which to choose activities for which they will become competent enough in to earn a badge.
It was gratifying to see how excited all the children were about doing this. B13 and T12 worked together really well and picked a few topics to concentrate on. The girls took a little longer on account of there being too many leaders and not enough followers (ahem). The one topic the all agreed upon wholeheartedly was learning about etiquette. The picture above shows their enthusiasm at starting immediately. So they balanced their (keepers) books on their head and walked around trying to look lady-like (which is hard to do when you have two mothers looking on in stitches!).
Saturday saw the return of our annual decking the halls:
Gary lit the fire and whilst the boys put up the tree and added the lights, the girls decorated the biscuits we had made minutes before and heated up some hot chocolate to go with them and the stirrer we had made a couple of days before hand. We used my Granny’s tea set to make it even more special:
I laughed at B3 trying her absolute best to be careful with the china. The marshmallow stirrers were a huge hit with the candy canes being used as impromptu smoking vessels and decorated into hearts:
Once finished Gary and T12 tried to help B3 pop the angel atop the tree:
Once up the rest of the children joined in and worked hard at putting up the decorations, including the cinnamon ones we had made during the week:
It was fun listening to them exclaiming over decorations used for years and recanting special memories which went with them. At last it was finished:
Then we settled down to some Christmas charades. Oh my goodness, I don’t think I have laughed as much for a long time. I had a stitch at the end! I took loads of photos but for the sake of everyone I have only included a few. Great memories:
Too much fun!
On the Sunday we all journeyed to the lovely 12 century chuch Gary and I got married in to watch the older children’s choir perform the Christmas nativity through song. I wasn’t allowed to take photos during the performance but here they are just before:
C12 sang a solo and I had tears streaming down my face. I was so proud and completely blown away by her beautiful voice. They all had a wonderful time.
On Wednesdays Gary and T go to fencing together which means I have some lovely older daughter time with my twins. After Christmas we will be using this time to continue with our Proverbs 31 study. This week we used the time to wrap presents. This year we have done something a little different. Last year we did stockings (I think the first year for us) and Gary and I filled them. It was costly, as you can imagine. This year each child has bought each person in our family a stocking present and an under the tree present:
I’ve been a bit lapse taking photos of the rest of the week, on account of some last-minute school planning for my little ones, so I have little else to share; plus the fact Gary has just returned from work! So I’m off.
I do hope you all are having a very merry Christmas season with much fun and laughter.
It all sounds wonderful, and lovely, and just about perfect…so many marvelous memories! I think we might have to add a round of charades to our own Christmas traditions here.
Leah, it was so funny!! I think we might take a daily dose of Charades over winter to keep our spirits up!
I love your homemade christmas tree decorations! Nice and warm pictures of your friends and family.
Thanks Karin.
Looks like a lovely week! I’m glad to see B3 using the crockery so carefully; I always have my heart in my mouth when I give my boys (5 and 8) real crockery but they’ll never learn to be careful if they don’t get to practice. The photo of your cat trying to be one with the stove made me laugh; that’s exactly what her near-doppleganger Paige does with my electric heater!
Lucy, my cat, now has several naked patches on her fur from sitting too close!
What a lovely, Christmas-spirit filled week! 🙂
Thank you!
Beautiful tree! We had so much fun doing ours last Sunday, too. C(11) filmed us to make a YouTube video. I was about to delete the (30 min!) video off my camera as I normally do when she’s uploaded them but then I realised I could put it on my own computer to keep – I’m sure it’ll be brilliant to look back on when they’re older. I especially love that pic of B3 drinking from her fancy cup. 🙂
She was so funny and deadly serious about not breaking it! So cute!
What a lovely week! I hope you all have a great Christmas.
Thank you, and you Francis.
What a wonderful time your family has doing everything. I love the pictures from their choir concert. They are such lovely children.
Thank you Christy. I can’t believe how quickly it all goes!
The love in your family shines through. I love seeing your decking of the halls. It looks very festive.
Blessings, Danw
Thank Dawn. It was certainly full of hilarity this year!
Aww, such sweet photos. Just love the girls and Granny’s tea set. Such wonderful memories you all are making. I am so happy to find YOU having such a lovely time with your friend, Lorna. Friendship is a blessing.
By the time you read this, I hope you will have had a wonderful weekend with your sweet family. Hugs to you, Claire.:)
Christmas hugs back to you!
How are all your home made presents coming along?
Claire, I just finished my last one. I must say this has been a race to the finish. We had some unexpected events in December, but the Lord has been good and has allowed us to spend time with family and that is what matters. I’ll be blogging about our Christmas…eventually.:))
Now it’s my turn for my comments to not want to come through on your blog. Silly computer.
Some times computers can be so temperamental!
I hope you are all feeling better now?
We are. It feels like this fall/winter we’ve been more sick than usual.
Lots of happy smiles and joyful fun!
Thank you! It was a particularly lovely week!
What a fun week! Your charades game has me excited about doing the same during our friends wassail this coming weekend – for Christmas carols – should keep everyone on their toes! You are so lucky to be allowed to take photos of your kids – all I’ve been getting for quite some time now are very posed pictures- or of someone’s hand covering their face. Ah, adolescence 🙂
Ah, adolescence…yes, I couldn’t have put it better myself!