New book - God's Promises for Your Every Need

For Christmas my husband gave me a new devotional book. It is really wonderful. 

I was reading tonight how Jesus is our sufficiency. Here are a few bible verses. 

And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19

Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. Mark 11:24

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. II Corinthians 3:5

I just thought that this was a wonderful reminder at this time when we should be focused on Jesus (the reason for the season). Yet, often times, it seems we are more focused on the material aspect of giving and getting. We get upset when we don't get all that we want at Christmas and yet God does supply all the we need - not necessarily all we want but all that we need. An important reminder. May God bless you and may you enjoy this holiday season to its fullest by staying focused on Jesus. 

Tired Boy or should we call this 'Don't make me eat my bananas'

This has got to be one of the funniest pictures. I was insisting that JJ eat all his good, healthy food. He wanted no part of all the fresh fruit. He is rather picky. He got all worked up, cried and just wore himself out. Eventually, he fell asleep right at the table. Just too cute not to snap a picture or two. 

Never did eat all his bananas!!! By the time he woke up they were too brown to be considered food.

Christmas memories

Christmas was wonderful this year. It was so nice to see all the relatives and to enjoy time with family. Here are some pictures from Christmas Eve.

Cookie delivery

Every year, we bake enough cookies to share some with our neighbors. It is one way we share our love for our wonderful neighbors. One of our dear sweet neighbors is an elderly man. He lost his wife many, many years ago. He does not bake and even much of his cooking seems to be TV dinners. My husband and youngest son went delivering cookies in the afternoon. About 45 minutes later the neighbor called to ask if we were going to the grocery store and could we pick up some items for him. In the course of the conversation, he thanked me for the cookies and laughingly confessed he had eaten most of them. I actually didn't believe that he had quite eaten the whole plateful until my husband dropped off the groceries. He came back laughing. Yes the plate only had 3 or 4 cookies left. Wow. Obviously he thought they were good but that had to have given him a gut ache. I did send the youngest over with more cookies the next day. 

That is one of the reasons we always bake cookies -- to share them. I remember when my grandmother was elderly. She couldn't cook for herself anymore. Plus, she always used to say she didn't like to make a whole batch of cookies. It was too much for one person to eat and who wants a whole batch of one variety. It is much better to have a smaller quantity and have a variety of cookies. 

Some of these neighbors were the dear sweet people that helped out my grandfather when he was older. Now that we live here I feel blessed and privileged to be able to give back to these people who were so caring to my grandfather.  

Book Review - A Christmas Passage

A Christmas Passage by David Saperstein and George Samerjan

This was a fun, light hearted Christmas story with a very nice message. The story is about a group of passengers that get stranded due to bad weather. A good samaritan comes to the rescue to take them in her van to their destination. They end up just missing an avalanche and in the process become stranded on a mountain. This ends up being an adventure of discovery for each person in the van. They confront their fears and worries. And in the end they receive a wonderful gift that all of them will remember for the rest of their lives. 

It is really a nice story. Easy read and good message. 

Domes - Christmas pictures

After the Titanic exhibit we stopped in at the Domes. They just renovated but I don't think the renovations were all that great. The roof was leaking quite extensively. And the special events Dome didn't look all that different. They had a new check in booth and had changed the lobby. Still, not sure it was worth the money that was spent.

They did have their Christmas display set up. It was nice but all the kids said they liked last year's display better. Still it was a great place to get pictures of all three kids together. The color and backgrounds are wonderful. It was really hard to get all three kids to have a nice expression on their face at the same time. The youngest kept forcing his smile to the point where it looked painful - like he was extremely constipated.

Here are a few of the shots we got:

JJ - the youngest

Our middle child

the oldest

brotherly love

The boys wanted to wear their hockey jerseys. The two oldest boys play for one club and the youngest is at another club - that explains the difference in jersey colors. All three are very proud of their teams this year and love the sport.

Titanic

On Monday, December 1st we had a field trip to the museum to see the Titanic exhibit. Hubby was able to come as he took the morning off work. It was really a great exhibit and thankfully we got in for school group rates. The normal prices are really very, very expensive. Normal adult price is $21 and we got in for $4.00. This was a field trip that I had coordinated. There were some hiccups in the setting up of this field trip but in the end it all worked out great which I am thankful for.

The kids liked the replica iceberg. They tried to make hand prints on it. They also had replicas of the rooms. That was neat to see and I was impressed with the amount of room for the first class passengers.

The thing they liked the best though and learned the most from was the passports. Each person was given a passport that explained who they were, their family relationships, who was traveling aboard the Titanic with them, etc. Then at the end of the exhibit there was a list of names and we could look up to see if the person survived or not. It was really a great learning tool. Fascinating.