Christmas 2014

I was really struck this Christmas with the word "Emmanuel"...."God with us."  WITH us. Incredible. I pondered that a lot throughout the month of December, and the closer it got to Christmas Day the more I was overwhelmed with gratitude for God's willingness to come down and live among us humans and BE one of us.  Simply astounding.  Christmas Eve was a time of powerful personal worship for me.

As usual, the children "patiently" waited to open gifts. :)

Son C opened his very own container of chocolate covered raisins, new pajamas, and new set of books (the Alex Rider series).

 Daughter G gave daughter H a sign for her bedroom door that says "Spoiled rotten pug lives here" because daughter H is in LOVE with our pug.  It was a big hit!

Son L with his new vest and bow ties.

Could it be????

Yes!  The lego sets most desired by these two!  Happiness.

New watch.

Daughter G gave me the new Pentatonix Christmas CD!!

Daughter H opened her special ornament we had made in memory of her biological dad.  She said later that it was her favorite present.  Love.

I was blown away by my husband's gift...he gave me a picture of a Surface Pro 3 and said that we'd go shopping later to buy the exact laptop/tablet hybrid that I wanted.  Wow!!  Daughter G has her own laptop, but the other 7 of us have all been sharing my husband's.  I know it is a very first world problem, but it has been hard to divide the time on one laptop when 7 people all use it for some amount of time every single day.  My husband put a lot of thought into a computer solution that would work best FOR ME...what electronic tool would best help me in the ways I really need?  I just felt soooo special that he values making my life easier.  That knowledge alone was such a huge gift!

So, thanks to my husband's year end bonus, I am now the grateful owner of a Surface Pro 3!!!  It is a laptop/tablet hybrid, meaning it has the full functionality of a laptop, but you can magnetically detach the keyboard and the "monitor" becomes a fully functioning touch screen tablet.  (for the uninitiated, it is the Windows version of an Ipad.)  It is small enough to fit inside my purse, but not so small that I can't type easily on the keyboard.  And it has the coolest little pen that allows me to write directly on the monitor and circle things or make notes, etc.  It is an amazing little piece of electronic technology for sure!  It will allow me to print documents when I am down in the schoolroom without having to go upstairs, to easily update the shared Google calendar that me and my husband use, take it with me to our homeschool co-op, keep it open on the kitchen counter when using online recipes....etc.  In a myriad of ways, it will help with the little things.  And doesn't life so often come down to the little things?

In other amazing news, we wrapped up this set of bongo drums for all the children, to represent the ENTIRE DRUM SET that we obtained used from a friend at church.  Woot!  Full band capability now right in our very own home!

(we set up the full drum set the next day)

And in still other big news, all of our children were ecstatic to receive this family gift of an xbox one! For years and years I have resisted having any gaming system other than the Wii.  Even that was a stretch for me at the time.  Long story that I won't bore you with (unless you really want to know! haha) but for a variety of reasons we felt that now was the appropriate time to purchase this as a family gift.  It has been a big hit, and *I* have even played a few games on it!

Happy lego building continued long into the evening.....

...as well as much merriment and singing into a spoon. ;)

We figured out the xbox controllers and the older kids played a bit right away while the younger ones worked on their lego sets.

A fun family evening.  My heart was very full!