Thanksgiving and Christmas

We had such a sweet holiday season over here. It pains me not to be able to post many of our favorite photo moments, but I tried to snag the few that didn't show faces.

First, no trip to my home town would be complete without frequent visits to the surrounding railroad tracks. We might as well have gone to Disney World. K-man and B-boy love nothing more than trains and train tracks, so the chance to see real, large, moving trains is a real treasure :)

K-man and my brother

B-boy and "Doc" (my dad)

We, then, headed over to see my extended family on Thanksgiving day. This is the only shot I can post, but K-man and B-boy both had about the most fun 2 boys could have. They slept hard that night!

My grandfather, who died many years ago, was a career railroad engineer. He also made amazing, elaborate model railroads that are still scattered through museums today. At my aunt's house this Thanksgiving, we snagged a few of his old model trains and brought them home. It is so sweet to hear K-man talk about "Pop" and "Pop's trains" all the time now. What a sweet connection to a precious man from a different generation.

...and then it was Christmas! 

We tried several new family traditions this year, and many of them turned into sweet memories. For advent, we bought 25 cardboard ornaments from a craft store and wrote a different name of Jesus on each ornament along with the corresponding scripture reference on the back. Each night, K-man got to choose one ornament out of the basket. We would read the name of Jesus, read the scripture verse, and talk ever-so-briefly about what it meant in the grand storyline of the Bible. It was sometimes sweet, sometimes chaotic, (sometimes couldn't finish fast enough), but at the Christmas Eve service, as readers were reading Old Testament prophecy and parts of the Christmas narrative, it was really special to be see his face light up as he heard names that we had talked about. It's been fruitful after Christmas as well.

On Christmas Eve, we sat down with K-man and talked to him about how God had blessed us with material things and how we were about to receive even more on Christmas day. We told him that we honor God when we think of others before ourselves, and we told him the sad reality that there were other boys his age who would not receive many presents on Christmas...maybe not even one. We prayed together and asked God to give us generous, loving hearts as we went through our toys and clothes and collected things to give away to children who might need them. It was a bit rough at first. His heart wrestled with the notion, but in the end, we were actually finding ourselves trying to find a way to convince him not to give away all of his favorite trains.

We carried on the tradition of taking K-man to the dollar store and letting him "shop" for the people he loves. It was especially sweet this year, because he could grasp the concept of getting things that people might like. A few people still ended up with dolphins and sharks that grow in the water (a sign of true affection, I think), but many others received very thoughtful gifts from K-man this year. The smile on his face as he gave gifts to people was PRICELESS! One of the best parts of my Christmas season. What joy!

Then, there wer, of course, K-man's school Christmas concert and church choir concert. I can safely post pictures of these, because...well...take a look...

Pre-K Christmas Party where the children sang "Rudolph" and "Frosty"

Church Preschool Choir Concert. What's that? You can't find him? Well, just look slightly to the left of the girl on the far right. Do you see the 2 brown shoes popping up from the floor? That's our man. The rest of him is sobbing on the floor behind Mr. Kevin.

As you can see, K-man is not much of a performer, but you can't do it all, I guess! On Christmas Eve morning, my parents gave the boys these 2 highly prized gifts. For K-man...a new bike! For B-boy...a cozy coupe truck. He can only go backwards so far, but if I let him, I think he would eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner inside. He adores this thing...

 

...and Rudy, our foster dog, seems to like it too!

We spent Christmas Eve night with my in-laws and had a very special Christmas morning with that side of our family. It.was.wonderful :)

 The Bible board books that B-boy received. A few days later, I caught B-boy in K-man's lap while K-man was "reading" the stories to him. Some of them were spot on. Some of them had some fuzzy details to say the least...haha!

 K-man and his beautifully wrapped gift from his Aunt Kristin. The boy loves cars. I think he could have stopped right there.

So after Christmas had come and gone, it was time to head back over to my parents' house to celebrate New Year's. K-man and B-boy had one awesome night shooting the obligatory fireworks in the driveway. We christened him well...went to the Fireworks trailer to pick the ones he wanted, held his own sparkler, and held a Roman candle (with assistance). When ours were done, some of our neighbors pulled out the big guns. We finished the night with 2 boys in their PJ's standing on the front wrap-around porch way past bedtime watching some very close, very large fireworks. They were loving every minute of it, and so were we :)

 Happy New Year! 

I can't imagine a year fuller than this last one, but hey...bring it on!