a very merry christmas 2014

I'm just going to level with you. I have written this blog post all day long with nothing in particular to say. So far I've written about how awesome this Christmas was and how fun it is to have a two and four year old. I wrote about how nice it was to have kids who are way more self sufficient than they were last year ie: they could sit at the kids table by themselves! Then I wrote about how I kept waking up on Christmas Eve because I was so, so excited for the kids to wake up on Christmas morning. Then I wrote about how grateful I am for friends who give me hand-me-downs for my kids to wear on Christmas Eve. 

But I deleted all of those posts because the truth is, I'm totally scattered today and like everyone else, wiped out. As a result, we took a sincere day off, played with lots of toys, tried to gain control of the toy explosion in every room, got the kids outside with the promise of hot chocolate when we came back inside. Mostly we read books and watched movies. It's been a lovely day.

And I took the time to look through all of the christmas posts I have written. All the way back to 2008! That's pretty awesome. We had the flu a few of those years, and it made me grateful that we stayed healthy this season. If you, too, are laying low, some of these are fun reads.

Christmas 2013: Little Elsie

Christmas 2012: Ivar and Elsie sing a song

Christmas 2011: Pregnant with Elsie and down with the flu

Christmas 2010: They year I gave the tutu's

Christmas 2009: Iced in at our apartment in Nebraska

Christmas 2008: Picture-a-day Holiday

indoor snowmen

Well, there is no snow to build a snowman outside, so we're building them inside! Ivar built these snowmen at ecfe and told me about the snowman pictured above, "This is daddy giving me a piggy back ride!" I found it very clever. Daddy even looks a little weary of giving such a big four year old a piggy back ride.

And then he built this one and said, "this is you and daddy. you're holding hands because you are married and that means love." It made me think about the time Rory and I went to the St. Paul winter carnival to walk through the ice castle. It was one of our first dates, and the very first time he reached for my hand. Oh man I remember everything about that moment. Mitten to mitten we walked through the castle and it was magic.

I think Ivar is right when he said holding hands means you are in love. Because we never let go...even when we got to the car he opened my door and 14 seconds later was reaching for my hand again as he started up the car. Everything was so new and exciting. Makes me want to go find my man and grab his hand...

making the magic

Oh man, these two. They are keeping me on my toes lately. They are the best of friends. Ivar begs me not to put Elsie down for a nap. He wants to be with her every moment. But then she gets in his business and he's yelling and she's screaming and I'm walking to the freezer to self-sooth with another Christmas cookie...

Yesterday I went to Target with Ivar and having him along was like shopping with a ball and chain around my ankle. A cheerful ball and chain. But a really pokey ball and chain. We had to stop at every display. He had to tell me that he "never told Santa I wanted this! But I do!" And I kept a positive self talk reel in my head about the actual joy in the season, the brilliance that is Target marketing and the fact that we are lucky to be able to afford any of this anyway.

And today he helped me wrap presents and it took hours. Because he needed me to cut every scrap of wrapping paper into microscopic pieces so that his train under the tree had scrap to haul to the scrap yard to weld a christmas tree for Gordon the train. I didn't fight it. I had seen the episode too. And it was clever. But I could have had those gifts wrapped in 30 minutes flat if I could have just thrown my actual scraps into the trash can.

It's a lot of work this whole Christmas thing. I am a bit weary already and we've only just begun! I wrote about being the magic maker a few years ago when pregnant with Elsie and I think it's a good read, and a good pep talk for pulling off all that still has to be pulled off.

So press on Magic Maker. And be sure to keep yourself fueled up on Christmas cookies.

gift giving this christmastime

My friend Beth hosts a Favorite Things brunch each December where each friend invited brings a favorite thing around $15. We then swap gifts, and the morning basically turns into an awesome infomercial for favorite nail polishes, fair trade items, shampoos, teas and coffee mugs and this year, a hair brush that everyone wanted to go home with. The picture above is the gift I brought, the prettiest wrapping job of my life. Inside was a little Kelly Rae Roberts print called Shine that I adore.

It is a super fun morning filled with quality conversation, great food and we each go home with something special. It's one of my favorite parts of December.

But gift giving is a funny thing. I like the favorite things party because you come with something that you love. It makes for easy shopping! Some people are really hard to buy gifts for. My friend Amanda, who runs the Soul Sisterhood, recently told me that she thinks everyone should take the Love Languages quiz to discover their love language and then the gift giver should try to give gifts to fit the receivers love language. A person's love language (how they receive and feel the most loved) might be through actual physical gifts. But another person might have the love language of Quality Time more than a physical gift. So you could take them out to lunch or spend an afternoon together. (That's my love language.) Rory's love language is Acts of Service and Quality Time. The perfect gift for him would be to offer to help him with his garden this spring. The other two love languages are Physical Touch (gift card for a massage!) and Words of Affirmation. I have nephew who I think has this one, because he loves reading the long notes I write in his birthday cards and has told his mom how he anticipates a card from me! I know those words of encouragement and acknowledging who he becoming mean the world to him.

I've been thinking about this concept with each gift I'm giving this year. Trying to think through the receiver's love language. And it is a joy! You know what I'm giving Rory? (He doesn't read my blog posts if they get too wordy, so I'm not too worried...but if you are reading, Merry Christmas!) I'm ending our membership to the Y! Ha! I haven't been very good about going the past 6 weeks (mostly because the flu and strep are rampant and I can't muster up the courage to drop my kids off anywhere they don't have to go...) and he's quietly been bringing it up. So before he can say one more thing, I'm going to cancel. He's going to love it! (And I may very well join again in February...) But for now he'll see it as the gift of $70 a month back in our savings and a wife who values a dollar saved.

The other gift I'm giving Rory has already begun. He has said for years that he wants to watch all three Lord of the Rings in a row with me. And now all three Hobbits have been added to the list too. We started this marathon last night and will break the whole thing up into 90 minute chunks. And even though Orcs don't really scream christmastime to me, I know this is a Christmas we will never forget. Best of all, he's so pleased that I'm watching with him. 

We are celebrating with the Harrington side of the family this weekend and I'm so excited to give a few of my gifts. I can't blog about them yet, but I will! But I am most excited to start The Christmas Box tradition that we've done in the Groves family since I married in. We're beginning this one with the Harrington's, and I'm so excited to do it with both families. Because my love language is Quality Time and The Christmas Box is the definition of Quality Time. 

lois walfrid johnson

This summer while at Mount Carmel Family Bible Camp in Alexandria, my mom introduced me to a woman named Lois. Lois was thrilled to meet another female beekeeper. She had kept bees for many years of her life but had never once met another woman beekeeper. Lois wanted to talk shop, wanted to know how my hives were doing, and all about our hobby farm. We became fast friends.

At some point it came up that she writes books and I was excited about that, since I hope to do the same one day. We also discovered that we both graduated from Gustavus and so we had that whole world in common too. But most obvious was our shared love for the Lord. Sharing a conversation with her was like slowly recognizing a kindred spirit with every word spoken. Lots of "I know! Oh I agree! It's so true!"

That night after evening worship, Lois handed me one of  her books to read. And she had one for Rory too. So that night, with our kids babbling in the room next to us, Rory and I sat up in bed reading our first Lois Walfrid Johnson books. They are written for adolescents, but there we were, in our 30's turning our pages as fast as we could. We were sucked in.

Lois writes about young kids who are learning to deal with real life issues. She does this with a Christian worldview, tying in truths from the Bible and showing how the young protagonist comes to believe God's word is true. It is stunningly done. So endearing. And so good.

I've been reading The Adventures in the Northwoods series this week. It's a story about a 12-year-old and her mother, moving from Minneapolis to Rice Lake in 1906 when the mother marries a Swedish farmer who had recently lost his own wife. The first book talks about what it means to be a forever family, what it means to have a new Papa, what it means to be loved without condition. I'm now in book 4 and I cannot put these books down. They're just so good.

And by good I mean they are well written, but they are also so moral. And truthful. So solid. After I read Lois' first book I told her that more than anything I felt grateful that she is putting out so much GOOD into the world. We know a lot of other messages vying for our kids attention, but this is the stuff you want your kids to read and to get excited about.

What has been most fun is "introducing" her to many of my friends with kids in elementary and middle school and how many of them already know and love her. She's new to me, but not to most mom's. Her tagline is, "a trusted friend of families" and she is! Families trying to teach moral, upright and honest children will LOVE Lois Walfrid Johnson.

Her books would be great for read aloud at bedtime for all ages. And all kids read at different levels, so I think they'd fit any age. Probably geared most toward 3rd-8th graders...but even that seems too narrow a reading audience. Because I'm 33 and love these books.

You can learn more about Lois at her website: www.loiswalfridjohnson.com

***

The Freedom Seekers series is a six book series, and each book is about 250 pages. It takes place around 1857 "when rivers were the highways of the time. Libby, and her father, and their friends faced life-and-death questions that are still crucial today:
-Who can I trust?
-What do I care about?
-What does it mean to be a never-give-up family?
-How can I live my belief in the freedoms sought in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States?
-What practical skills do I need to develop?
-How can I make choices based on biblical principles?
This series centers around The Underground Railroad.

The Viking Quest series is a five book series, and each book is about 200-250 pages. This series travels from Ireland to Norway, Iceland and Greenland, then sails with Leif Erikson to the New World. In this series the main characters help establish the first North American settlement by Europeans- five hundred years before Columbus!

The Adventures in the Northwoods is a ten book series, and each book is just over 100 pages. The story takes place in Northern Wisconsin where the main character learns to deal with peer pressure, family relationships, works toward a dream and learns the value of giving a person a second chance.
This is the series I am currently reading and I can't put them down at night. :)