Busy, Busy, Busy

I sat down to begin another post on Friday. Before beginning, as is custom, I checked our Other Folks blogs. Nikki wrote a post entitled "Who Moved My Advent?" This post brought Psalm 46:10 to mind. I have been so busy with many activities, including getting ready for Christmas, that I have forgotten to reflect on the reason we celebrate. Last year's appreciation was so much more poignant. We were newly expecting, but frightened about losing the our tiny baby (three weeks of bleeding does not bode well for a first trimester baby). To a very small degree I imagined feeling like Mary; excited, hopeful, and scared. Nothing brings you humbly before the Lord like fear and pain. To God be the glory, this year Talia will be at our side as we celebrate Christmas. With all that I am striving to do this Christmas, I am praying to remember Nehemiah's words "the joy of the Lord is your [my] strength." And our lives are so full of amazing blessings, my joy should be in abundance.

I will attempt to bring you up to date with our recent activities. My next post will be about Talia (complete with more pictures). So here is what we have been doing:

Christmas Preparations

After buying our tree, Jon and I brought in our Christmas boxes. Jon put the lights on the tree (hence the light poll) and I began to decorate. To be honest, much of our decor is shoddy, either hand-me-down or Dollar Tree specials. Each year I get rid of more decorations in an attempt to decorate sparsely and nicely rather than copiously and cheaply. This year our decorations are limited to a wreath, a garland with poinsettias, Christmas linens in the kitchen and bathroom, a green tablecloth, seasonal candles and candle holders, Christmas CDs, and a two stockings (one more on the way, when we brave the holiday shopping).

I am finally home and able to make plates of Christmas goodies for the neighbors. Only one problem, our oven decided to opt out. Jon estimates that repairing the oven will be costly, based upon the price of the parts we would need to order. We have decided to wait until next year to buy a new oven and range. Sarah heard my plight and was kind enough to invite Talia and I over to bake at her house. We were amazed at how long it took to bake and care for two babies. Here is Sarah holding Talia and Anna.



Anna is fascinated by cameras, lucky for me:



We made chocolate cookies and press cookies. It was a deliciously fun day.

Over the next two days I went to Stroller Strides, had company, and made fudge and English toffee (no baking required). After Bible study on Friday, Jon and I attempted to pass out the six plates of goodies to our neighbors. We were able to pass out two. We tried again on Saturday, with similar success. Much to our disappointment, we concluded that two of our neighbors were on vacation and their goodies would be poor quality when they returned. What a shame, we had to eat them ourselves. And we did. They were consumed by Sunday night.

Another Christmas preparation was gifts. Without going into much detail, we worked on creating quite a few gifts. It was a fun project for Jon and I, but it took much longer than expected and we ran into a few snags.

Nevada City

We went to the Nevada City Victorian Christmas with Jon's parents. It is an event that occurs several Wednesday nights in December. The draw is the historic city lit for Christmas, booths with crafts and foods, carolers dressed in turn of the century attire, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, and folks dressed up like Eskimos. It is a popular event, two of our neighbors, friends from church, and one of my past student's mom were all in attendance. Here we are in the restaurant:



Here is Talia and Grandma:



Here we are in front of a famous church:



I say famous because it (and much of Nevada City) is the setting of one of our favorite Christmas movies, The Christmas Card.

Illness

Talia is proof that breastfed babies do get sick. She and I got another cold. This time Daddy was spared. Fortunately this cold seemed to be short-lived and of minor severity.

Teaching

I just couldn't stay away from kindergarten. On Wednesday I was a guest teacher at Truckee Elementary. My friend, with whom I taught last year, invited me to teach a Hanukkah lesson at her new school. I really enjoyed being in Judy's classroom. It was fun to have kids fighting over holding my hands again :). While I had a great time and am happy that I was able to hone my rusty teaching skills, I realized how grateful I am to not have to plan and prep lessons every day. This particular classroom posed an additional challenge: It is a bilingual class. Most of the daily instruction is given in Spanish. I asked Judy if I could give my lesson in English since my Spanish is so sloppy that I would be a poor example to the kids. I tried to increase comprehension with visuals, props, participation, and gestures. Antes de ensenar, tuvia la oportunidad a charlar con los ninos en espanol. After the lesson we danced the Hava Nagila. Just a note, it was 17 degrees in Truckee that morning.

EBay

Another new adventure for us has been selling on EBay. We found several items around the house and granny flat to sell. It was a learning process but we seem to have made a nice profit. It has been a fun venture that we look forward to continuing (it is also a great way to get rid of all the stuff cluttering the granny flat).