This has been a great week of love, laughter and friends and you all know how happy that makes me. Choosing to take it easy during December has been a really great decision and we are reaping the benefits every day.
Last Friday evening we began what we hope will be a weekly Keepers of the Faith Club. We are doing it with Lorna’s family. Lorna is taking the older girls for their Keepers of the Home, I will be taking the younger two for a simplified version of the Keepers of the Home whilst Gary and Andrew (Lorna’s husband) will be taking the two boys for their Contenders of the Faith. The children will have a book each from which to choose activities for which they will become competent enough in to earn a badge.
It was gratifying to see how excited all the children were about doing this. B13 and T12 worked together really well and picked a few topics to concentrate on. The girls took a little longer on account of there being too many leaders and not enough followers (ahem). The one topic the all agreed upon wholeheartedly was learning about etiquette. The picture above shows their enthusiasm at starting immediately. So they balanced their (keepers) books on their head and walked around trying to look lady-like (which is hard to do when you have two mothers looking on in stitches!).
Saturday saw the return of our annual decking the halls:
Gary lit the fire and whilst the boys put up the tree and added the lights, the girls decorated the biscuits we had made minutes before and heated up some hot chocolate to go with them and the stirrer we had made a couple of days before hand. We used my Granny’s tea set to make it even more special:
I laughed at B3 trying her absolute best to be careful with the china. The marshmallow stirrers were a huge hit with the candy canes being used as impromptu smoking vessels and decorated into hearts:
Once finished Gary and T12 tried to help B3 pop the angel atop the tree:
Once up the rest of the children joined in and worked hard at putting up the decorations, including the cinnamon ones we had made during the week:
It was fun listening to them exclaiming over decorations used for years and recanting special memories which went with them. At last it was finished:
Then we settled down to some Christmas charades. Oh my goodness, I don’t think I have laughed as much for a long time. I had a stitch at the end! I took loads of photos but for the sake of everyone I have only included a few. Great memories:
Too much fun!
On the Sunday we all journeyed to the lovely 12 century chuch Gary and I got married in to watch the older children’s choir perform the Christmas nativity through song. I wasn’t allowed to take photos during the performance but here they are just before:
C12 sang a solo and I had tears streaming down my face. I was so proud and completely blown away by her beautiful voice. They all had a wonderful time.
On Wednesdays Gary and T go to fencing together which means I have some lovely older daughter time with my twins. After Christmas we will be using this time to continue with our Proverbs 31 study. This week we used the time to wrap presents. This year we have done something a little different. Last year we did stockings (I think the first year for us) and Gary and I filled them. It was costly, as you can imagine. This year each child has bought each person in our family a stocking present and an under the tree present:
I’ve been a bit lapse taking photos of the rest of the week, on account of some last-minute school planning for my little ones, so I have little else to share; plus the fact Gary has just returned from work! So I’m off.
I do hope you all are having a very merry Christmas season with much fun and laughter.
