Baby Jesus is borned

Tyler is enthralled with baby Jesus this year. He goes through the grocery store singing "Hap Birday, Hap Birday, baby Jesus." He points out every manger scene we come across. If we forget to recognize it when we pray, he reminds us, "You could pray, 'baby Jesus is borned.'" We spend a lot of time making sure our kids know the reason we celebrate, but like so many other things, it's actually the children who keep the simple faith so clearly.

My little spy

In the interest of male bonding, Brian took Colby along while Christmas shopping for me today. Lucky for me, it's tough for a 5-year old to keep secrets.

"Hey mama, guess what we saw at the Disney St-.... oops. I can't talk about that..... Maybe after Christmas."

Randomly wondering

Whenever I see a patrol car cruising the streets in the area, I start to wonder. Is this is a good thing? More police presence means less likelihood of crimes, right? Or maybe crimes are already increasing, which is why they need increased police presence. So what do you think? Do you feel safer when you see police around, or do you feel that maybe you never were as safe as you might have thought?

Thanks, Brigitte!

Check out the adorable artwork Brigitte made for Tyler's new pirate big boy room!! I found her on eBay, and she also sells her work on http://www.etsy.com/ (her seller name is artgoesfun on both sites). Not only does she do fantastic work, she's a sweet lady who is really easy and fun to work with. If you need anything for your kids' rooms, please try and support her. She's just getting her online business up and running, so get ahold of her before she becomes rich and famous!

Are you sure?

click to enlarge

There are supposed to be nine people in this picture. I can only find three. Can you help?

Let it snow baby, let it reindeer

Just because I live in the desert doesn't mean I don't appreciate a good snowflake... as long as I don't have to deal with the cold weather and poor driving conditions! A fellow mom shared this link with me, and it's quite amazing. Take a look at http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/. There are actual photographs of snow flakes, as well as movies of snow crystals growing. Check out the galleries; simply fantastic. Everything in creation displays the glory of God, but these little flakes are at the front of the pack.

PS- The title of my blog comes from the Relient K Christmas album. Don't want the quote police coming after me.

I'm not a crafty mom

It's not that I don't like crafts. Some things people come up with are surely adorable and clever. It's just that they don't come very natural to me. Most of the time at MOPS I just let Kalani finish mine for me instead of working on it myself. So at times, especially around Christmas, I start to feel inadequate about my lack of creativity. Today at Michael's I found a cute little glitter craft that I bought for Colby & I to do together. It may not be the most complex or intricate piece of art, but we did it together and it was fun. We made a memory. :)




In other news, I promised more Christmas pictures:

This last one is really special, even amongst many special Christmas ornaments:


It was given to us last year by our dear friends Paul and Jaime Reichman, who are ministering in Krasnoyarsk, Russia (http://paulandjaime.spaces.live.com/). They were with us last Christmas and brought us this pretty ornament which depicts one of the main buildings in their city. We made many happy Christmas memories together before they left (guys, do you remember the xtra large gingerbread man cookie with every conceivable form of icing or decoration on it?), so a special ornament to remind us of them at this time of year is very precious to us.

It's beginning to look a lot like... well, you know

CHRISTMAS! We just barely started getting the house ready for Christmas... more pictures to come!

It's 11pm, and the hospital is calling

Sleeping soundly through the end of "Shrek the Third" the other night, I was startled awake by the sound of the ringing phone. With a sleepy stumble, I made it over to pick up the receiver. I looked at the clock. 11:00pm. This can't be good... any phone call at such an hour must be bad news. The kids are here with us; they're ok. Maybe my parents? My brother? It doesn't help my nerves when the voice on the phone says, "Hello, this is so-and-so from Natividad Hospital..." My mind races through the list of loved ones once again. Who would be in Natividad Hospital? She goes on. "Your son, Colby, was seen here last Tuesday?" Yes. It was only an ear infection. Could there somehow be bad news associated with that, and a week later? "Well, we've discovered that instead of charging your credit card, we issued you a credit."

Ok, wait. You made a mistake in your billing office, and you're calling me at 11:00 at night to clear it up?

"Do you think you could give us your credit card number so that we can make the charge?" Let's see. It's late at night, I just woke up, and some stranger on the phone is asking me for my credit card number. Is this one of those incredibly bizarre yet somehow still realistic dreams? I told her I wasn't going to give out my card number over the phone, but suggested she bill me. "Please hold." Several moments later, she comes back with a response: "Ok, we're going to avoid (yes, "avoid") the charge and we'll send you a bill for the copay you owe."

Gee, thanks. And GOODNIGHT!

I did it!

I had taken this picture of a sweet little girl enjoying the "snow" falling at the Christmas tree lighting at the mall the other night. I liked the composition, but some of the other elements in the photo bothered me. A lot.

After googling around for a quick second, I came upon a video showing me how I could accomplish the affect I was going for. Of course, it always works so perfectly when somebody else is showing you how to do it, right?









Complaints to Brian for help resulted in him sitting down beside me on the couch to see what he could figure out. Lo and behold, just by the mere act of him sitting his wise self down, the method from the video all started coming together. So I guess I should say "we" did it, though it was mostly just his auora contributing to the effort.

Anyway, this is what "we" came up with. I still wish the background was something other than the facade of the mall with spotlights glaring down. A nice fluffy pine tree or Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland would have done the trick. Were I more proficient at Photoshop, maybe that could happen. But for now, it's a sweet little girl in the courtyard of the AV Mall, and I like it a whole lot. Who knows... maybe in her imagination, there's a snow-covered pine tree there after all.