How We Celebrate Christmas

Traditional images of children waking their parents up at 5:00 A.M. and dragging them to the Christmas tree do not happen in our home. First of all, my kids love to sleep in. Before you get jealous, let me hasten to add that the older three sometimes like to whisper until 10:30 P.M.; and the baby likes to wake up and cry for no good reason at intervals during the night.

The second reason that we don't go by traditional early morning tearing into presents is that we are rarely here on Christmas morning. Since we have two other places to be during the season---with my family and with my husband's family---we are often traveling or away from home on the actual day. If we are home Christmas morning, I am usually finishing up food for Christmas dinner so we can leave for one of the grandparents' houses.

Jerrod 2009 Christmas

 Our Christmas morning (even if it is another day or at night) consists of gathering around the tree with Daddy reading Luke 2 or Matthew 1 from the big Bible. Then, the kids open their gifts first; and we open ours last. When it's time to travel, we listen to A Christmas Carol by Focus on the Family Radio Theatre on the car radio.

The most hectic Christmas celebration is at my husband's parents' home. The main reason is there are 8 (soon to be 9) grandchildren all opening gifts from 2 sets of aunts and uncles and their grandparents at once. Trying to sort it all out when they are done requires great skill especially when only one of them has girl toys. We enjoy a Christmas dinner on the years we are there on Christmas day of ham, mashed potatoes and noodles and all the trimmings usually including Mom Self's Dutch Apple Pie. I usually take my Cranberry Salad and a cheesecake. Here's the one I'm taking this year:

Candy Cane Swirl Cheesecake

My parents' house is only slightly more calm since we have only 4 (soon to be 5!) kids there. Christmas dinner, when we are there for it, usually consists of spiral-sliced ham, hash brown casserole and all the trimmings usually including one of Mom Davis' Vanilla Peanut Butter pies in a meringue crust. Eggnog and waldorf salad are family traditions passed down from my dad's family. We usually play games through the day while the kids enjoy their gifts.

Jeffery 2009 Christmas

As I mentioned in our activities post, we like to keep things simple. The kids get so many gifts for Christmas, so I like it best when all these celebrations are spaced out over a week or more. That way we can process all the gifts and find places for them before a new batch comes in! We haven't reached Ann's or Stacy's simplicity yet, but we have cut down on the gifts we personally buy. We try to buy a few quality gifts that will last all year (and beyond) both by not breaking and by being used often.

So that's Christmas for the Selfs! Check out these other blogs to see how they celebrate Christmas:

Judy @ Contented at Home
Joanna @ The LaVans
Jessica @ It's the Little Things

Activities for the Christmas Season

We have purposely kept things simple around our house for the last few years. The words hectic and holiday shouldn't be used in the same sentence, in my opinion. (Except for the previous sentence, of course.) We don't send Christmas cards or bake a lot or go to a lot of parties. This is how Jerrod feels if Christmas gets too busy:

 Here is a list of the things that make our Christmas season special. Though we don't get to them every year, we try to do so.

• Decorate the tree with the kids while listening to Christmas music. The youngest member of the family gets to place Baby Jesus in the manger in our nativity scene.
• Read our collection of Christmas books.
• Drive around and look at Christmas lights.
• Go to our church Christmas party.
• Have a date night to the holiday orchestra concert.
• Visit Grandpa in the Christian Home where he lives.
• Reading the Christmas story around the tree before opening presents
•  Christmas dinner with all the trimmings
• Watch the kids perform in the church Christmas program.



Jessica has been Mary for about 3 years in a row.

 

This is serious business!

 What activities do you and your family enjoy at Christmas?

For some ideas from other bloggers, visit:

Judy @ Contented at Home
Joanna @ The LaVans
Jessica @ It's the Little Things

How We Christmas Shop

The Thirty-One Giveaway winner was: Julie (aunteegem)! You should receive an e-mail shortly!

Don't forget to enter this week's giveaway for a $75 Best Buy Gift Card!

I do not remember ever getting up at 4:00 in the morning to peruse the Black Friday sales. It's just not something that appeals to me. Call me lazy or unmotivated, but I just can't bring myself to do it. However,  I've done some Black Friday shopping online as well as taken advantage of some Cyber Monday sales.

Buying things up throughout the year sounds like a great plan; but if I were to try that, my kids would like totally different things by Christmas than they did back in February. Or they would have a growth spurt and not fit into the awesome Christmas pajamas I bought them. (Ssh! Don't tell.)

So, my husband and I start shopping a little after Thanksgiving and finish up....well, a little after Thanksgiving. Within a week, we are usually done; and we get the double fun of having packages delivered to our door often through the month of December and getting to open them on Christmas morning.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking...how do we afford it? Well, we try to put aside a little throughout the year in our Christmas ING account. I know it's hard to find money to put aside, but it's the same money with which I would be buying all those gifts through the year.

Another thing that helps a little toward Christmas gifts is Swagbucks. All we have to do is create an account and do our regular internet searches on the Swagbucks toolbar. We accumulate points, or Swagbucks, as we do searches. When we get 450, we can redeem them for a $5 Amazon gift cards (among other prizes). We cash in our Swagbucks right before Christmas and shop with them on Amazon. Right now, they're having special deals:  Shop Amazon's Toys - Holiday Flurry Deals Week

While we're searching, we go to Ebates first.  Most online retailers (except Amazon, unfortunately) give you cash back on your purchases if you click through Ebates to their site. Ebates tracks our purchases and gives us 3-6% (or more!) cash back after the holidays. We earn money for doing the shopping we were going to do anyway!

At this moment, our shopping is all done, and boxes arrive almost every day. We might not have gotten the best deals of the year on Black Friday; but all of the gifts are paid for, and we didn't have to brave the crowds.

See how these other bloggers Christmas shop:

Judy @ Contented at Home
Joanna @ The LaVans
Jessica @ It's the Little Things

How We Decorate for Christmas

I will just warn you that decorating is not my forte. My creativity (if one wants to call it that) is channeled into writing out my ideas or expressing the musical ideas of others through piano. I'm also very creative when it comes to clothing options for a child who has had a diaper blow-out in a very public place far from home. But, I digress.

The one time of year I decorate is Christmas. Not much decorating, mind you. My husband puts up the Christmas tree, and I decorate it along with the kids. Before we had children, we had a perfectly coordinated red and gold tree with decorations from a high-end department store's after-Christmas sale. The few "specialty" ornaments we had were red or gold to match the decor.

When the children came, we began to collect photo ornaments with their current year photo. As I was going through our Christmas decorations this year, I had to throw away some of our original red and gold bows. Then, I realized that our photo ornaments, which we have always bought to match the current tree decor were not coordinated at all. When I laid out all of our decorations, we had a mixture of red, gold, silver and blue with a few black or white pianos given me by piano students over the years.

I realize that my creativity will not be featured in Better Homes and Gardens anytime soon. With my apologies to Martha Stewart and my home decorating genius readers, I present our current Christmas tree:

Yes, in fact we are quite patriotic around here!
Now, go check out these other blogs whose owners are much more creative than I:

Judy @ Contented at Home
Joanna @ The LaVans
Jessica @ It's the Little Things

How We Celebrate Thanksgiving

For the next six weeks, instead of the In Our Homes posts on Fridays , we will be participating in a blog hop with two other bloggers. There will be a different topic every week to give you a peek into our lives. We will also feature a giveaway on most of the Fridays, so make sure to stop in each Friday for the rest of the year!

I have never cooked a Thanksgiving dinner, and I don't expect to for many years. We still travel every Thanksgiving. This year, we went to my mom's for dinner; so we only had to travel about 10 minutes on Thanksgiving Day. Today, we will leave to celebrate with my husband's family who lives a little further away. Next year, we will switch and be with his family on Thanksgiving Day and with mine the day after.

Both Thanksgiving feasts are the same in many ways. Abundant food, noise and fun! On my side, our family officially makes up half of the attendance (at least until my sister's baby is born in the spring). We usually try to fit in a visit to my grandfather who is cared for in a Christian nursing facility. I'll probably have to skip that this year since a few of my kids are getting over colds and could affect the residents. Then, around 2, we all gather in for tons of food! This year, I made Cranberry Salad, Pumpkin Pie and Maple Pecan Pie.We share what we are thankful for, and my dad usually reads a Psalm of thanksgiving. We hang out and alternately play games and eat.

On my husband's side the noise escalates because my kids only make up half of the kids (at least until my sister-in-law's baby is born this summer)! Yep, eight kids and seven are boys! Last year, we were entertained by an original play about the Pilgrims performed by the kids after dinner. This year, we will just eat leftovers and finger foods since everyone is coming in after Thanksgiving. I'm making Party Pizza Appetizers and Blender Pumpkin Bars. We will probably try to fit in a visit to my husband's grandmother who is doing well for being in her upper 90s!

Now go and see how the rest of the bloggers celebrate Thanksgiving!

Judy @ Contented at Home
Liz @ Inside the Mind of Mama Bear
Joanna @ The LaVans
Jessica @ It's the Little Things

Blizzard Blog Hop

 

O.K. so attending Blissdom is only a distant dream of mine anyway. Not sure if I'm even allowed to participate in this.  Ann Marie is a serious blogger, however, and she got this neat idea to have a virtual meet 'n' greet for bloggers who could not attend the Blissdom blogging conference. 

If you 've been reading here for awhile, thank you! I love my loyal readers and enjoy your comments and e-mails, too! You all can just skip this post.

If, however, you just found my blog through the bloghop, welcome!

Before I tell you who I am, let me tell you who I was:

Seventeen years ago, I was a slave, clothed in the rags of my own righteousness. The King of Kings found me, cleaned me up and gave me His own royal robes to wear. 

Thirteen years ago, I was God's princess, determined not to be entangled with any earthly prince and to pursue a college education and ministry career. Then I met an earthly prince who was the closest thing to Heaven I'd ever known.

Eleven years ago, I was God's princess, becoming the queen of His choice for me as I gave my vow at the altar to him. I was determined that no little princes and princesses would join us, however, at least for a very long time.

Eight years ago, our first and only princess joined our castle (which I failed to fully enjoy in those days), and the king and queen entered the world of parents. Three little princes have joined us since.

About six years ago, a group of ladies who joy in their roles of daughters of the King, crowns to their husbands, mothers to their children and keepers of their castles, took me under their wing and taught me in the Titus 2 way what I had been too stubborn to see: 

Living God's calling for women is a JOY! 

Ever since, I have been imperfectly striving to live out the Joy Ever After of my own God-given fairy tale and two years ago, I began this blog to show others what God is doing in my life in the hopes that they will be inspired to find their own Joy Ever After--ultimately in the Castle Beyond This World where Joy will never be interrupted and we will be with our King forever!

For more about what I do here, see First Time Here? To meet the ones who make up my little slice of Heaven here on earth, read Our Story. 

Thanks so much for stopping by! May you leave with joy! 

~Jennifer~