The Christmas Season Begins

The Christmas holidays have begun! Phew! There is already so much to post about. First of all, we have a guest for the Christmas season!!!! The children and I were so excited to have Mr. Badger arrive at the very end of November to stay with us for a month. He has been traveling all over the world this past year (including a visit to Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey) for tea!!! as well as the place where Christopher Robin played Poohsticks!!). He was most recently in Minnesota staying with Lisa. 

Right away David had to make a house for Mr. Badger!!! Inside is a lovely Christmas tree and a place to rest. Mostly Mr. Badger sits outside where he can watch the goings on of the family.

A friend recommended Ann Voskamp's book Unwrapping the Greatest Gift: A Family Celebration of Christmas. I cannot tell you how much I/we are enjoying this!!! It's a version of the Jesse Tree, which we've never done before. Each day there is a different story from Scripture (in chronological order) so that you get the whole story of the Bible before Christmas. We also add an ornament to our Jesse tree each day. This book is so well written and communicates the message of the Gospel in each story.

We ended up putting our tree up earlier than planned because I was at Costco and thought it would save a trip later in the week! You can see we still had Thanksgiving up!

Fortunately, we have one very patient child who helped get lights working for us!

And the rest of the kids went to work as well!

By the end of the evening we were ready for the holidays!

And Mr. Badger seemed to approve!

The next day we went with Grandma downtown to the city to see the Indianapolis Repertory Theatre put on A Christmas Carol. It was terrific, and very festive! Mr. Badger got to come as well!

Then we stopped at Panera for some hot chocolate and bagels.

It was a nice change from our normal routine!!!

The living room is making me SO happy!!! Plaid makes me happy. I think it always has. I can't have enough of it.

In the kitchen I have a painting by my great-grandfather and some greens from my mom.

Friday night, being nearly my birthday, I went to "Burrowood Inn" to spend the night. I decided to bring a tree and some lights with me. Everyone was delighted and ornaments were fetched from the cellar. Apparently, it's been six years since Burrowood had a tree. High time to change that!

Mr. Badger came along too -- a little bit of R&R never hurts anyone! We enjoyed citrus pork chops for dinner.

Here's the tree all nicely decorated!

My bed was waiting for me with birthday treats. Mom and I got to spend the evening painting, talking, and watching a movie. We stayed up late!

But we got up early and it was beautifully foggy out.

We had a lovely breakfast in mom's room on top of the painting table. She even bought papaya to remind us of our African years.

After that we headed out for a day of shopping together. It was a wonderful little break.

And now another week has already begun and there will be many more adventures to relate. I hope you are enjoying this festive season!

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