Christmas Festivities

Last year I made a mental note to get out and enjoy more Christmas festivities in 2015. And I'm so glad we have because we've made some sweet memories.

Our favorite thing we've done so far this season is pack a box for Operation Christmas Child. It made a great impact on the little hearts in our home. The drop off location was even beyond precious. Two of the cutest elderly ladies at a local church collected our box and offered us tea and cookies. I seriously wanted to sit and have tea with them and ask them to share stories of their days of being a mom of young kids, and see what wisdom I could glean from them.

The joy these three felt, knowing they were sending a gift off to a boy in the world, was the sweetest thing to watch. They put such care into what they chose. We prayed for that boy, wrote him a note, and the kids drew him pictures and tucked them into one of the writing journals in the bottom of the box.

(We filled the box with things recommended on OCC's website: toiletries, a pouch of things used for writing, drawing and coloring, a journal, a few toys, sunglasses in a pouch, candies in a pouch, etc.)

A friend told us about a Christian Christmas concert going on at OSU, and the performing violinist is a gal I knew from Portland (our church there) and she's also played for many weddings I've shot. It was a wonderful concert and the kids did a great job sitting through the whole thing, very quietly. At the intermission I definitely wondered if we were pushing our luck by staying for the second half with tired kids, but they made it through and we were really proud of them! 

Last Sunday Josh and I attended the OSU Corvallis Symphony and loved it! When the first notes were played my eyes got big - wow, such beautiful music!

A friend gave us a small fake tree that she was done using. We have our real Christmas tree in the living room, so we enjoyed putting this by the piano in the sun room. The kids had fun decorating it, and I've loved having the twinkle lights at night while I play piano!

The other night I was walking through the kitchen and caught the moon rising over the field... I couldn't believe what a clear night it was and had to snap a pic. It never gets old!

This is kind of random, but during one of my last photo shoots of the season I looked over and just a couple steps away from me was this heron, drinking from a mini pond of water.

I thoroughly have enjoyed reading this book recently! The raves are real. It's a good one!

Since I've finished working for the year, school has been so much more freeing because I feel much less mental weight. When there's less for my mind to juggle, I can clearly be more focused.

One thing I've really enjoyed about schooling at home recently is the rabbit trails the kids and I go on. Our kids like math and science, and the questions they ask when we talk about certain things are a lot of fun to answer. Something as simple as talking about right angles turned into a full blown conversation about degrees and angles and they just kept asking questions.

Or the other day we started a new science book, and instead of doing one worksheet, we did 6-8 together because they were eating it up! We learned all about plant parts and how they reproduce, how the insects/animals pollinate, we looked at plant parts in our microscope, and the end result was kids dressing like bees to play outside. ;) 

Over the Thanksgiving weekend our friends Aaron and Val came to visit. We stayed up way too late talking the night away about deep things, and funny memories.

Josh's office gave us tickets to the Duck game against USC. It was a great win!

We were seated on the shaded side of the stadium and thankfully were well prepared for the chilly weather. It was a great date day with my love!

We recently spent a morning with Gina and Nora. I needed to pick something up in the store that I didn't want the kids to see, so Gina and Nora rode along and we made it a fun time with coffee, and then played in their front yard leaves before we headed home! :) It's so much with Nora getting older because she is just one of the bunch now, keeping up with the big kids.

These days of kids on playgrounds feels fleeting. Sometimes I just have to snap a pic!

These days are fleeting too, and I couldn't possibly cherish them more. Sometimes I wish we had had 10 kids. They are such a treasure. xoxo

The rain is now upon us, and it's getting dark at 4pm each day. Have mercy! I love this time of year soooo much, but I am ready to "spring ahead" already! ;)

Happy Wednesday!