Traditions

I am a week behind on Slice of Life and playing catch up.  Last week was all about Traditions.  I wrote about our family Christmas traditions last year.  You can read it here.

I started thinking about some of our family traditions that I believe have helped to make us a strong family.

Traditions like:

• Attending church each and every Sunday as a family.  Only exception would be illness related.
• Paying a full tithing.
• Eating dinner together as a family.  On weekends we eat lunch together too!!
• Every Monday night is set aside for Family Home Evening. 
• Fun summer vacation trips every year. We loved to camp.

I am grateful for the special memories these have made and to see how our children are incorporating these into their little families. 

This was written for Slice of Life. Please join us by clicking here.

Our Christmas in Pictures

In one weeks time we celebrated Christmas, two birthdays and a baptism. They say a picture speaks a thousand words so here is a book!!

Aiden the Birthday boy!

Mr. Monkey Cake

Let's Sing

Andrew with his Daddy right before his baptism

Andrew and his monkey comforter.

 

 Rachel and Joey

Amy, John and One Year Old Aiden

Brad, Kyle and Katie

Katie with embroidery from her Grandma Virginia

Rachel with embroidery from her Grandma Virginia

High tech paper shredder!!  The real one was at home!

 

Master Jedi Evan!

Homemade Aprons

Aiden all cuddled up in his monkey blankie!

More aprons!

A family of aprons, there was even one for Leah's dolly!!

 Spencer chillin' with Grandpa

There is nothing like reading books together

Leah cruising with Evan.

Happy 31st Birthday, John!!

Sledding Central Coast style!!  No snow, no problem!

How do you empty a birdbath??  You get Kyle!!  Leah is not too sure what had gotten into Kyle.

Cousin hugs!

April, Matteo, Thomas and Corbin we love you bunches and dearly missed you! 

My house must be very boring.  Andrew, my 8 year old grandson decided to turn my darling little Fisher-Price children's nativity into a bowling game.  I noticed he didn't use the baby Jesus, and just figured that was because it would not be very reverent to bowl down a figure of the Christ Child.  When I asked Andrew about it he said,  "...it was too short to knock down". 

I think today we will do some baking and gift wrapping!!  We definitely need to keep busy!! 

Some Things Never Change

One of the joys in life for me has been to watch those I love interacting with each other.  I remember when David was a baby, I would just sit in awe and watch as these two people I loved with all my heart would play together and love each other.  

Mike and David, circa early 1977

It could be something simple, like wrestling with a magazine.  

Mike and David circa late 1977

 

Or the recliner becoming a cool place to play peek-a-boo!!  

Mike, David and April;  May 1978

Or just sitting together.  Don't they look happy!! 

Now it's fun to see this continue on with our grandchildren. 

Grandpa and Leah

 Playing "race cars"

 

 Hiding with Grandpa in the Closet

 Playing the ball is a heavy weight.

All our grandchildren and their parents are coming for Christmas. It will be a joyful time. 
Be prepared for more pictures.

Giving

Giving is the most exciting part of Christmas!  For some strange reason this year I felt it important that family have something that I made.  So, I have been sewing up a storm.  Phew!  While it was fun for me to sew, I'm glad to be done and hope everyone is happy with their gifts.  For me, it was much better being home sewing, then out fighting the crowds of people at the stores.

I'm not too fond of last minute Christmas shopping.  One year I remember we were really down to the wire.  It was Christmas Eve and I didn't have a gift yet for Katie Rose.  I think she was about six or seven years old.  Mike and I were at Sav-On Drugs of all places and we spied what we thought was the perfect gift.  A giant Teddy Bear!!  We were so happy and were pretty sure she would be thrilled!!  

 Here is the tree, with the giant Teddy Bear all wrapped up in the silver package.

Katie loved that bear!! She named him "Joey".  I'm not to sure why.   Poor Joey has really been through the ringer!!  When Katie's brothers wanted to tease her they would do things to poor Joey.  They would kidnap him and one time they even hung Joey from a plant hook, by a ribbon around it's neck and out of reach of poor Katie who devastated to see her poor bear being hung to death. 

Joey has been much loved and mended and restuffed many times. 

 I do believe Joey was the perfect gift.  Here's proof...Joey survived all that.  And Katie still has that giant teddy bear today! 

Kitchen Disasters

Well, well, we have had our share of kitchen disasters!  Some have been my fault, others not!  Alright, I'll be honest, most kitchen disasters are my fault. I'm really bad at turning fried eggs, and I have burned my share of food, and cooked bricks instead of bread and made scrambled pancakes!!  Oh, and I almost burned the kitchen floor!!  But, I'll save that story for another day.  Today, I want to share a kitchen disaster that wasn't my fault and it happened at Holiday time.

Isn't this a sweet doggy??  This is Lucky. Affectionately, known as Lucky Dog because we adopted her from the Humane Society! 

Lucky we miss you, may you rest in peace!

 This is our family gathered outside for a picture after a yummy Thanksgiving dinner. 

 Thanksgiving 2001 Back row:  Steve, Seth, Grandma and Grandpa, Bob, Ben, Lindsey, Liz, Laurel, Richard, Sarah, Ethan, Spencer, David, Sariah.  Front row: Nate, Merry, Evan, Caitlyn, Rachel, Katie, April, Cindy and Mike.

 

So, I bet you are wondering what this has to do with a kitchen disaster.  Well, what happened was after our yummy Thanksgiving dinner one year, and before kitchen clean up we decided to get a family photo before everyone went every which way!!   So, out to the front yard we went for the photo shoot.  When we came back into the house, we heard noises in the kitchen.  And what did we find, you may ask.  Well, Lo and Behold, Lucky Dog had gotten into the turkey carcass that was still sitting on the counter!!  What a feast she had!! And a disaster for us because we had no left over turkey for yummy sandwiches and turkey soup!!  

Moral of the story:  Always, always clean up first!! 

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I love old movies!   One of my all time favorite Christmas movies is "The Bishop's Wife", from 1947.  It is about a Episcopal Bishop who is trying to fund-raise money to build a cathedral.  He prays for help and Dudley, the angel (Cary Grant), comes to help him.  Dudley seems to be helping the Bishops wife more than the Bishop himself.  I love the end of this movie.  Listen to this great sermon:

When I first watched this movie I realized that our family needed to remember the Savior more at Christmas time.  It gave me the wonderful idea that we needed to hang a stocking for the baby Jesus.  So, I made one:

We hang it every year now.  It helps us to have a more Christ centered Christmas.  We used to put good deeds we did for each other in the Jesus stocking.  Now we choose a gift we will give Him, write it down and place that in the stocking.  It is usually something personal we are working on, like improving our prayers, or reading our scriptures daily, or maybe spending more time helping and reaching out to others. It's amazing what you can learn from a movie made in the 1940's.