Christmas Sunday

At our church on Christmas Sunday we have always given away "Christmas sacks" to everyone present. Noah is getting his sack and really seemed excited about it. He was on his way to show his Papa. He just adores his Papa.
Last night we took him to see Santa. On the square of our town there is a Santa House where you can take kids to talk to Santa. All Noah wanted was to get out of there and away from that crazy looking guy with all the white hair. Poor kid. I remember taking our kids and having at least one picture of them with Santa and they are crying. I guess we are just mean. They laugh about it now but it wasn't funny then.



I pray all of you have a Merry Christmas and that we remember why we even have a Christmas holiday. Christ is the reason and he loves all of us so much. What a wonderful Father we have.

Finally got my Christmas tree up and mantel decorated. I usually decorate a lot more than I have this year but with doing the carpet and all, I just wasn't in the mood to take it all out and then have to put it all back up. I really like how my tree turned out though. I have a very nice set of mercury glass ornaments for the tree but last year I didn't use them because of Jessica's cat, Cecil. He was very fascinated with all of the dangly things on the tree plus he would get up in the tree itself. Now this tree is an artifical tree so I don't know what his deal was with getting in the tree but he did. I used just plain simple glass balls. After he broke all of the ones on the bottom, I replaced those with plain simple plastic balls. So this year with Cecil and now that Noah is walking, I decided to use these plain simple balls again and it really looks good. My mantel is different every year because I can never remember how I did it the year before or I'm just in a different mood. This year I was feeling more "country" so that's how my mantel turned out. I have loved looking at other blogs and their decorations and I hope you enjoy mine. Now for the pictures.

Today I am linked to Rhondi's Thankful Thursday. I am thankful today for a wonderful earthly father. He would have been 82. My dad passed away 14 years ago but he left us a wonderful Christian heritage which began when I was 10 years old with my dad and I being baptized on the same day. There were four of us kids so any time I got to do something or go somewhere with my dad when it was just me and him was a treasure. One of my best memories of being with my dad was when I was about 6 and he took me trout fishing somewhere in Missouri. There was a trout farm up there so I was guarranteed to catch a fish. On the way up there, we stopped several times to have a picnic which must have started my love for picnics.
There were times he would take the entire family fishing and what a mess that would be. He didn't get to fish much on those trips because he was constantly getting someone untangled from the bottom of the lake or out of a tree. I have lots of memories of my dad but I think my favorite one would be of how as he lay in the hospital dying he led one of his best friends to Christ. He had been talking to this man for a long time, and he never gave up. Here is a picture of Daddy with a group of guys that flew into Alaska to do some fishing. Daddy is the one on the left with the orange scarf.
Daddy left us with a love our of heavenly Father too. How blessed I am to have two fathers that have shown such love to me. Thanks Dad for always being there for me and showing me how much Christ loves me. I miss you and I love you.

OMGosh!

There has been so much going on since Thanksgiving. First we did the Black Friday thing and this year we didn't even go to bed. Kacee and Jenny wanted to go to Toys R Us at Midnight and that took care of any sleep we might have gotten. We literally shopped til we dropped around 1:30 that afternoon. While we were gone, Gary and some guys from church started moving our furniture out of the house because on the following Tuesday we were getting new carpeting. Gary decided we could move the furniture and pull the carpet up ourselves and save a lot of money. We did save about $500 BUT whew! pulling all of that carpet, sweeping, painting, hauling, moving furniture, sleeping on the concrete floor really takes it out of you. Actually Gary and some guys did most of the work but it sure was tiring watching them when I was home. Gary's schedule is much more flexible than mine so he was home more than me. We finally got the carpet down and are now putting all of that furniture back, cleaning out as we go. Fun Times! It looks beautiful. Didn't realize how bad the other had gotten. At least for a while there will be no more eating in the den. We'll see how that goes. My house is going to be so clean now. We even carpeted the closets this time around. We have lived in this house for almost 33 years and this is the fourth time we have carpeted. The second time we picked a terrible carpet and it didn't hold up at all. We built this house and started out with that wonderful dark brown SHAG carpeting. There is only one thing that I can think of that hasn't been changed in all the years we have lived there and that is the wall paneling in the den. Now don't think that. It really doesn't look like you think. It is very different paneling and is actually quite cozy. Hopefully by this weekend we will have everything back in its place and I can get all of my fall stuff down and begin on Christmas.