Angels Singing of Christ's Birth

This year I have been thinking a lot about the angels that came to the shepherds to declare the wonderful news of Christ's birth. We sang a beautiful arrangement of Hark the Herald Angels Sing this year in our Christmas program, and it gave me a sense of the way the angels must have felt as they sang to express their joy that the Savior was born and that he had come to save us all. It must have been a glorious and exciting time! I am so grateful that Christ came and saved us from our sins and from death. I am grateful for the hope and peace He has brought to my life over and over again.

Here are a couple of videos of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I think these songs do a good job of capturing the joy and excitement that I have felt this year for Christ's birth and life.

Before the Marvel of This Night

Here are the lyrics to one of the pieces we sang in the Christmas program this year:

Before the Marvel of This Night

Before the marvel of this night, adoring, fold your wings and bow,
Then tear the sky apart with light, and with your news the world endow.
Proclaim the birth of Christ and peace, that fear and death and sorrow cease:
Sing peace, sing peace, sing gift of peace, sing peace, sing gift of peace!

Awake the sleeping world with song, this is the day the Lord has made.
Assemble here, celestial throng, in royal splendor come arrayed.
Give earth a glimpse of heav’nly bliss, a teasing taste of what they miss:
Sing bliss, sing bliss, sing endless bliss, sing bliss, sing endless bliss!

The love that we have always known, our constant joy and endless light,
Now to the loveless world be shown, now break upon its deathly night.
Into one song compress the love that rules our universe above:
Sing love, sing love, sing god is love, sing love, sing God is love!

visit from Ryan's parents

(Read this one--the other one wasn't finished yet.)

Last Sunday Ryan's parents came to visit us. They stayed until Thursday morning.

On Monday I did homework in the morning, and then we went and looked at the Duke gardens and walked around Duke campus. Ryan's dad took a lot of pictures. Kevin liked seeing the fish, the geese, the turtle, and the blue Heron. We enjoyed looking around the Duke chapel. There was someone in there practicing The Messiah  on the organ, and I just loved it. The organ had a really beautiful sound. Kevin really enjoyed it too. When we went back outside he kept running back inside and saying, "Song? Song?" There were a couple of students nearby who tossed their football around with Kevin for a while. One of them even told Kevin he should go vegan. (We are politely disregarding that advice, as milk is currently one of Kevin's few sources of protein.)

On Tuesday I had class in the morning and Ryan had to help administer a final all afternoon. The rest of us spent the afternoon at Kidzu, a children's museum. The favorite activity was definitely the Gravitron. (You can see a picture of it halfway down this page.) It had a magnetic wall to which you could attach various pipes to make a winding tunnel for balls to roll down. Kevin couldn't get enough of it.

On Wednesday we went to Raleigh and saw the Capitol and the war monuments all around it. Then we went to the Natural History museum. We saw dinosaurs, turtles, snakes, spiders, beetles, fish, crabs, and butterflies. Kevin's favorite exhibit? The escalators, of course. He just wanted to ride them the whole time. After the museum we went to Chick-fil-A and then drove home in a lot of traffic and even more rain. Ryan's parents babysat Heidi and Kevin so Ryan and I could go out for ice cream alone. We had such a nice time just sitting and talking after we finished our ice cream, and I realized we really need to go on dates alone more often.

Ryan's parents left early Thursday morning. It was so nice to have family here to visit! Kevin loved his grandma and grandpa.

On Saturday evening Ryan and I got a babysitter and went to a party held by one of Ryan's advisers. That was the first time I've left Heidi with a babysitter that wasn't family, but she did great, even if I worried the whole time. We had a nice time and it was fun to get to know some of the other people Ryan works with.

Yesterday we had our ward Christmas program in Sacrament meeting. It went really well. We had some really beautiful pieces and the Spirit was very strong. Playing the piano and singing in the ward choir has really strengthened my testimony of Christ this Christmas. Kevin was coughing and had a runny nose, so I ended up bringing him and Heidi home after Sacrament meeting while Ryan stayed and taught in his Primary class.

We've had quite the series of illnesses this fall. I'm definitely getting tired of it. There was the cold I got at the beginning of the semester that spread to my eyes, then a few weeks later the kids had colds, then I got swollen lymph nodes, then Ryan and Kevin had sore throats and fevers, then Kevin had stomach cramps and threw up a couple of times (in the grocery store and the doctor's office--lovely!!), and now the kids have colds again. I am being very consistent about washing hands as soon as we get home, but somehow the germs are still sneaking in. Maybe we should just never leave the house until February? That being said, we have loved the extended fall weather this year! Up until this week it's been the perfect temperature. (Anybody want to move closer?)

ward Christmas party, 2011

Last Saturday (the one over a week ago) we had our ward Christmas party. The bishop wanted to make it really special and focused on service this year, and the whole ward got involved. There were men chopping wood in the morning and families singing carols at nursing homes throughout the day. We adopted several families for Christmas and worked together to get them some gifts.

I am on the Relief Society activities committee, and we were in charge of coordinating the food for the dinner in the evening. To minimize waste, we asked the Young Women to serve the food to people as they went through the line, because usually there are a lot of little kids who take too much food and throw a lot of it away. We asked people to prepare hams and green beans that the ward purchased, and also potato dishes and desserts. I volunteered to be in charge of keeping food warm and taking food out as the servers ran out, so things were pretty crazy for a while. There were a couple of women in the kitchen chopping up hams. One of them stayed after that to cut up all the desserts into small pieces (again, to minimize waste). I think the dinner went really well!

On the stage in the gym there were two Christmas trees with all the gifts people brought for the families we adopted for Christmas. It was an amazing sight, and I felt so blessed that our family had participated. I think God was very pleased with what our ward had done.

After the dinner we sang carols and had dessert. Our family ended up staying to help clean up all the food and dishes, which was actually a lot of work! The kids were good sports about it.

I enjoy hearing the conversations Kevin has with himself. For example: Kevin likes to eat bites of bread dough. One day I had just started some bread mixing in the bread maker, and he stood up on a chair to look in. Then he said to himself, "A-bite? No, a-mix." (Can I have a bite? No, it's still mixing.)

Since I decided to give up sweets except on the weekends, I've started making fruit smoothies almost every day--they satisfy my cravings, and I don't have to feel guilty about it because fruit is great for you! Kevin has come to expect smoothies for lunch and will go get a bag of frozen peaches out if he sees me making his sandwich. He likes to push the buttons on the blender for me.

Lately Kevin blows my mind with the things he's saying. It's like a switch flipped in his brain and he figured out all sorts of things about speech. He will say words, then listen for us to repeat the word, and then he will say the word again trying to make it sound more like the way we said it. A few days ago he was asking for some applesauce by saying, "Saw? Saw?" and then when I said "Applesauce" he said, "Applesauce" back to me quite clearly, and he has continued to pronounce it correctly. He's figured out how to say his own name, and he can count in the right order from one to nine. In the past week or so he has started to copy things that we say, which he hasn't really done before. And he's comprehending more things. Recently we went to the post office, and before we walked in I told him he needed to stay next to me, and he did stay next to me the entire time. Then we went to get some things at Target, and after I thought I had everything, I said out loud, "Let's see, did we get everything?" And Kevin responded with, "No. Milk." I was pretty impressed. I'm just not used to him participating in conversations with me. It's fun to see him starting to have conversations with other kids or with Heidi.

Christmas goals, 2011

This will be our fourth Christmas as a family, and also our fourth Christmas away from home. I'm trying to be better about planning this year than I have been in the past. Last year I still had lots to do a few days before Christmas, and then Kevin got croup and we were just happy the house got clean before Christmas! Here are some of the things I want to do this year:

• Tell the kids a story about the Savior every day using the Gospel Art Book (a tradition we started last year).
• Act out the nativity with a group (I wanted to this last year, but I didn't plan it soon enough, and like I said, Kevin got croup)
• Make a cheeseball
• Have a family testimony meeting--either on Christmas Eve or before opening presents (a new tradition I want to start).
• Finish buying Christmas presents.
• Make stockings for Ryan, Kevin, and Heidi (also a project that didn't work out last year).
• Make a headband for Heidi out of one of my old shirts (a Shopko purchase that fell apart after two washes).

We probably won't get a Christmas tree this year. I love Christmas trees, but I just don't think I can handle the stress of constantly keeping Kevin from messing with the ornaments and trying to knock it over. To decorate, I've set up the nativity sets, put out my porcelain dolls, and set a lot of the Christmas ornaments on my wall shelves.