Christmas Sweets

My Christmas cactus is in full bloom!  I caught a shot of it as the afternoon sun was hitting it.

The paper white bulbs I planted are blooming.  They are special to me at Christmas time because the morning I got up on our wedding day.  I looked in my flower bed on my way out to the car and there was a paper white narcissus blooming.  I picked it and attached a love note to it and placed it in the men's dressing area and Rich got it when he arrived at the church to get ready for our big day.

Mary and I made snowflake cookies a couple of days ago.

Mackie is such a funny little guy!  He wanted to try some of those cookies.

Yesterday Mary and I made a gingerbread house.  We had so much fun eating the icing that fell and the extra gum drops.

I just love these last few days before Christmas!

Santa Perspective

This is our perspective on Santa.  We tell Mary that Santa's real name is Saint Nicolas and he really lived and loved Jesus.  He was a man who gave his fortune to the poor and cared about children and most of all he loved God.  So all the men we see today dressed up like Santa are just people who are remembering St. Nicolas and what he stood for.  When I took Mary to have her picture taken with Santa, he asked what she wanted for Christmas, she told him, "Oh, I just love Christmas!"  He smiled and I was so proud of her.  She is such a sweetheart and really loves everything about Christmas.  On Sunday we were at our pastor's home for a Christmas potluck.  At the end of the meal the pastor's wife played the piano and we all sang Christmas carols around the tree.  Mary just walked up in front of all the people and began to direct the singing.  She moved her arms in perfect time just like a choir director.  Everyone was amazed what great timing she has for such a young age.  She ended the song just like a choir director too.  I know she will enjoy performing as she grows.

 

Beautiful waters, warm weather, inviting beaches...

We were so blessed to have such a lovely cruise on our honeymoon. I will never forget stepping onto that ship and seeing how the ship was just glistening with Christmas decorations and listening to the beautiful live Christmas music floating up the decks of the ship and holding Rich's hand. I was brought to tears and my heart was so full of joy on what God had done in our lives!

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Our Special Day!

We had a wonderful day yesterday celebrating our anniversary.  We went to a great sea food restaurant.  We always get sea food on our anniversary because Rich took me to a fabulous fish restaurant in S. Cali and then proposed on the beach at sunset.  We also went on a Mexican Riviera cruise for our honeymoon.  Yesterday we both ordered the lobster and prawns platter and it was delicious.  After our meal we took a walk over to the Harry & David store here in town and bought some goodies for our holiday gift baskets.  While we were checking out, I spied a lighted red nose for kids.  I told Rich, "Oh Mary would love that!"  So we got that too.  She did love it and sang Good Ol' Rudolf again.  She just keeps cracking us up!  I have included a video of her too.

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Our Anniversary

Tomorrow Rich and I celebrate our 9th Wedding Anniversary.  The years have gone by quickly.  They have been the best 9 years of my adult life.  I couldn't ask for a better man than Rich.  He is the perfect husband to me.  We share so much in common, we are best friends.  We share our faith and our mutual attraction.  He is handsome, tall and has beautiful curly hair.  All the things that made my heart go pitter pat then and they still do.  I love the thought of growing old with him and we share so much joy in our beautiful baby girl that God gave us in our later years.  What a joy!  Here is a slide show of some shots of our wedding.  The music is one of Rich's favorite pieces of music that comes from an opera.  We hope you are blessed is hearing and seeing what God has done in our lives.

 

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Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer

Mary has really liked the story of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer this year.  I have a VHS tape of the old show that was made back in the Sixties with Burl Ives as the Snowman.  That was one of my favorite Christmas TV specials as a child.  She just loved it when I showed it to her and she has watched it a lot.  Last week we did a little craft project making a Rudolf refrigerator magnet.  I got the idea from Lois' blog "Walking on Sunshine".  Mary also did a pencil drawing of Rudolf pulling Santa's sleigh.  I didn't help her.  She just wanted a pencil and paper and sat at the table and worked away.  I was pretty impressed on her detail for just turning 5!  She also loves to sing the song.  So, I recorded her the other night and posted it at the end.  As I have said before, she is quite the ham  :)

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It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas!

I just love the images of Christmas.  Here are some shots from our house.  Mackie enjoyed watching Mary and make a fresh wreath this year, we also made some ornaments out of beautiful fall leaves from our yard.  Rich made some wonderful Christmas pickled peppers.  He grew the jalapeno peppers in our garden and then preserved them.  They have a wonderful flavor with just a hint of heat.  My Christmas cactus, a bowl of oranges and an advent tree also sits on our table.  Mary loves putting one ornament a day on it to count the days until Christmas.  I also have included a slide show of us cutting our tree.  I have posted the pictures before but I have also included a short video of all of us decorating our tree at the end of the slide show.

 

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Christmas Performance

We had a really fun event this weekend.  Mary performed with her ballet class at the Festival of Trees here in town.  It is a fund raiser for a local hospital and is very well attended.  The Christmas trees are just so beautiful.  There were about 500 people watching the kids dance.  It was such a great experience for her and as you will see in the video she does not have any stage fright.  LOL  She is a real ham!

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Christmas Joy

Cutting the Christmas Tree

December 1st is here and I am loving every minute of it.  Christmas time is one of my most favorite times of year!  We went and cut our Christmas tree this time.  The last couple of years we have had a fake tree and we both had a hankering for that fresh evergreen scent in our home.  So we did a little research and found out that the Grand Fir tree is the most fragrant.  So, that is what we got.  We went out to a U-cut Christmas tree farm that is owned by Mary's ballet teacher.  She was so surprised to see her teacher out there.  We took a little while to find just the right one but it was all worth it.  When Rich was going to get the van to put the tree in, Mary and I took pictures of each other to pass the time.  Mary is turning out to be a pretty good little photographer.  When we got the tree in the van and paid for it, we stayed in the parking lot and had hot chocolate and listened to Christmas music on the radio.  It was such a beautiful day.  We sipped our hot chocolate and stirred it with candy canes.  We set the tree up and put it in water right away.  We waited to decorate it until the next day.  We just enjoyed the scent and beauty of the tree that evening in all of it's natural glory!