In The Potter's Hands: December 2008

I love decorating for the holidays! It really gets me in a festive mood. Especially to have some Christmas music playing in the background. I just love this time of year!! The girls were really excited to get all the decorations out and put up the tree. They did a great job of decorating it! I also enjoy reenacting the story of Jesus' birth using our little nativity scenes for the girls. They have a lot of fun playing with those. I read in a magazine how one family doesn't put out the baby Jesus until Christmas Eve and their little children have fun going around and finding all the baby Jesus' on Christmas morning so I did that this year too. It's a fun way to show what Christmas really is about. Anyway, I just wanted to share a few pictures of our decorations.

We added a fun toy to our tree this year. Lowe's put all their decorations for half price so we couldn't resist this one.

This year we tried something different for Thanksgiving. Instead of spending it in Iowa with family, which would've been great also, we decided to go with our vacation buddies to Branson MO. It was a great idea, thank you Jana! We had so much fun spending time with friends that we don't get to see very often and Branson is a great place to take the family. Being on a limited budget, Jason and I couldn't go to all the shows but enjoyed what we were able to do. Sunday evening we left the kids with the men and all of us girls went grocery shopping. Of course Jason and Josh weren't there yet so BJ and Patrick had the privilege of watching them. I think Patrick might have been taking a nap the whole time so it might have been just BJ. Poor guy doesn't even have kids yet and he got stuck with them all! He's a trooper. We each were assigned two meals for the week. That worked out great and was cheaper than eating every meal out. Monday we relaxed for most of the day, Jason and Josh arrived that morning in time for breakfast. The Hemions and Smiths went to the Dixie Stampede that night and the Doherty's came over to our condo for some good ole tomato and sausage gravy. That night I was up late making a breakfast casserole and then Tuesday I stayed at the Hemions condo all day making Gumbo. They all went and played miniature golf in the afternoon and then the Hemions and Doherty's went to the Shangai circus. By the time they got back my gumbo was done and we took it over to my cousins house to share it with them. My uncle was a little late in arriving so after we got done eating the rest of them went down to The Landing to see a light show on the river while Jason and I stayed and visited with my family. Wednesday we went and rode the go-carts and then shopped at the outlet mall for a couple of hours. After lunch we had a couple of hours to relax before we all went to the Noah's Ark show! That was really neat! My cousin happens to work at that one so we were able to get in for half price! Very nice! Thursday of course was Thanksgiving so we were busy preparing Turkey dinner. Jason smoked the turkey in a new charcoal smoker dealymabob and it turned out great! Of course he and BJ went golfing while that was cooking...or smoking...? I had the tough job of opening up a couple cans of cranberry sauce and Jana bought a couple of pies and tossed a salad. I think Esther and Corinne worked the hardest on the meal that day. Esther had to peel all the potatoes, actually I think Josh did, and then she cut them for the mashed potatoes and Corinne made homemade stuffing and apple pie! It was all delicious regardless of how much we did or didn't work.
That night Jason and I went to my Uncles house to visit with them some more. Friday we headed over to Silver Dollar City! I made the mistake of riding the Powder Keg first thing! I had no idea what I was in for and neither did poor Tea!! Needless to say, we both stuck to the kitty rides the rest of the day! We had a pretty good, cold day there and were ready to drop by the time we made it back to the condos. The guys ended up staying later than us girls so they could ride the roller coasters again in the dark and we took the kids home to feed them all the leftovers so we could empty the fridge out before we left. All in all it was a very fun week and I'm very thankful that we were able to go! I think our next vacation with our vacation buddies is going to be in Florida in a couple more years. Jana has probably already started planning it. Without her these vacations would never happen!!! Thank God for Jana!