Christmas festivities are gone...new year begun

Ah, it's over. Don't get me wrong, i love Christmastime; get togethers, traditions, advent, songs, memories, etc. I just think it gets to be a little much and am always ready to get back to regular life! We did have a great Christmas, the morning was spent at home and then the rest of the day with my family. The kids played together while the rest of us got to sit around and chat. I learned something new this year in the boys preschool advent (is that sad?) I never thought about the symbolism with the shepherds being the first visitors of Jesus and Jesus being our Shepherd. Did i miss that somewhere? I love that. God just thinks of everything, doesn't he? There's no way we can comprehend it all, but i marvel at who He is.

It's a tradition for me to take the boys to the food bank at Christmas, with bags of groceries to donate. This year we did it the week Adam had off school and the food bank was closed, but the pastor let us in to drop off the donation. At the same time, a lady came wanting to get some things from the food bank and i overheard him tell her they were closed. While she was walking out, i signaled for her to come over to our car, i still had bags to take in, and told her to go through the bags and pick what she wanted. She was so grateful. I was thrilled #1 to bless someone in this way, and #2 that the kids were able to witness the whole thing. It was a special Christmas memory.

I came up with a Family Moto for us for 2012. The boys are still young enough where they think this is fun and cool to have a family motto, not sure how much longer i can get away with that! It's simple..."Make it a good day!" They shout it while doing a fist pump in the air, so funny. and the same evening of coming up with our motto i read this verse in my devotions, to go along with it "This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it." Adam is not a fussy or whiney kid, which i appreciate very much, But he can get a stinky attitude like none other. I hope this motto can stick in his heart and maybe somehow grasp the idea that we can control how our day is going by how we look at things. It's also a good reminder for the rest of us.

My personal focus for the year and beyond, hopefully, is to be more intentional with my prayer time, specifically for the kids. What a difference we can make in their lives and futures by committing them to prayer. I am inspired by Stormie Omartian's, Power of a Praying Parent. In the winter we don't watch any TV, since baseball isn't on, so i want to be intentional with some of my free evening time and focus on this.

When Clay was born, and the twins visited us in the hospital they both kept exclaiming "He's tame!" "He's not wild like the kitties!" "He lets us pet him!"

Well, they were wrong, he's a wild, WILD child! another focus for the year is to train this little powerhouse. In the past week he's run up in front of church, grabbed the mic and started 'singing', while our pastor was delivering a wonderful christmas eve message. He's broken glasses, put many items in the potty, and Saturday takes the cake with pulling the fire alarm at our christmas dinner at my grandparents retirement home. After many apologies to the police, fire, and ambulance crew, i decided this should probably stop. I hope to report next year that Clay is a fine, young lad who listens to instructions :)

A picture of me, just prior to confessing to firetruck #1:They were way too nice, and basically offered to do a photo shoot after the 4 fire trucks, 2 police men, and ambulance crew all got notified it was a false alarm. Rose was on that :) Clay will never remember this, but we're not going to let him forget it anyway! Adam already has a plan to bring duct tape to next year's dinner and tape the alarm so Clay won't do it again. I'm almost positive we'll be doing that.
Last thing, i promise...on my mind right now. Adam is suffering from being a brother to twins. (and newly nicknamed "fireball"). He's never said a word about it, but i just "know" so don't argue with me :) He is constantly overlooked when we are out and about. Example of this, last year we went to storytime at the library and we were late (imagine that), when we walked in the lady in charge said "i was wondering if the twins were coming today"....What do you think that did to this mother hen? I felt like saying, "um, Adam is here too!". These things happen regularly. And even with people who he knows, and see him often inadvertently overlook him. I understand though, there's almost always 2 boys talking at the same time, and Ben, Brad, and Clay are all louder then Adam, so who wins? the one you can hear! i watch his face though as he gets interrupted by a brother and the attention is moved from him to the brother. i sense his self esteem going downhill and his fear of rejection is making him quieter then i think God intended for him to be. He wants attention just as much as the rest of them but doesn't know how to get it. I'm happy though that when it comes to the 3 of them playing together, the twins adore him and he's rarely the odd one out during playtime. So anyway, it's kinda a weird situation that most kids will never be in, and i hope it becomes a non issue at some point. But it's been a growing concern of mine for some time now.

This got really long, i'll dedicate it to aunt Rhoda who gets disappointed when she has nothing new to read on here!

Happy new year to everyone and thanks for reading!