(And All My) Work Be Praise

Inspired by this blog post , found through a pin on pinterest , I gave my husband twelve dates for his birthday this year. I'm sure this is true for all of us, but we've struggled to find time to spend one-on-one time together, particularly since the birth of our third child. And when we do have some time miraculously appear, we can never decide what to do! So I researched and investigated and used old Christmas cash that never got deposited so that I wouldn't leave a credit card trail . . . and put together eleven date-night (or day) envelopes. (We already have a date scheduled for January, so I didn't make an extra one for the first month. Don't want to overuse the free babysitting from in-laws, you know.) Many of my ideas came from The Dating Divas ; some are local attractions we haven't visited yet. Around the beginning of every month (or the end of the previous month), we'll sit down with the calendar, consult the appropriate envelope, and ...

I did it: I exceeded my Christmas goal by two pounds! I'm into my smaller-size jeans, for the most part, though not yet cords or dress pants, and all of my skirts are basically wearable. Psychologically, I'm most excited that the middle digit of my three-digit weight has dropped another number. It just feels  better to be in this particular group of tens! However, I'm also done vigorously attacking my weight for a while. I found out this week (at his six-month check-up) that Silas hasn't gained any weight in the past two months. I'm positive my milk quantity hasn't decreased any, but it has me wondering if I've affected the quality  of it by restricting my calorie intake. Since Silas still refuses to take a bottle and is now rejecting the spoon, I'm his only source of nutrition. The doctor isn't worried, and Levi went through a small phase at six months as well [actually, Levi continues to weigh in in the 3-5% percentile, but that's just who he...

Obviously, I need a new way to hang stockings. I wrote last year  about our family's experiment with exchanging gifts on St. Nicholas Day (December 6). This year, my husband and I co-wrote an article for our church newsletter about the same thing.  You can read it here: http://eccfellowship.org/archives/newsletters/2012nl/201212nl.pdf   Scroll down to page six. Boys laying out blankets to sit on. Someday, I'll have a nice rug in this room. We started our morning in the German tradition with stutenkerl , man-shaped sweet bread with raisin eyes. Honestly, I think they're a little creepy.  Decapitating the stutenkerl . . .  Hey, don't I get one, too?!  After breakfast, we opened our stockings. I think the age and understanding of my children is apparent from the fact that they want to eat breakfast before opening presents. I spent the rest of the day mediating fights over the new James train .  It still feels a...

I've said it before, I'll say it again: pinterest is running my life. There I was, with my regular Christmas decorations scattered all over the house, totally content to hang the usual wreaths in the usual places. And then: oh! I have wire hangers and dozens of extra gold ball ornaments! I must  make that wreath immediately! That's pretty much what happened. Here's what happened next: It turns out I'm really bad with ribbons and bows. I'd love to make this a little neater, but I just don't know how. I also didn't have quite enough gold balls, as evidenced by the fact that you can see the wire hanger peeking through. At night, though, with the Christmas lights shining in through the glass front door, it sparkles nicely and you can't see the imperfections. (Please excuse my truly horrible picture-taking skills.) Another trick gleaned from Pinterest: to hang a wreath by a ribbon, hang a command hook upside-down on the back of the...

I've had a ton of ideas for Advent calendars and countdowns and activities and the like, but what with the busy season, visits from my extended family, and a short bout of stomach flu (just me, thankfully), I decided to keep things simple this year.  After all, Levi's really the only one of my three children to have even a little sense of what's going on, and I have plenty of years ahead for toddler and preschool activities! So yesterday afternoon, in one of the few hours I was upright and not curled up on the couch nursing peppermint tea, Levi and I made a traditional paper chain. I let him do pretty much everything: cutting the paper into strips, deciding on a color pattern (red-green-white), arranging the strips in the pattern, writing a number 1-25 on each strip, and applying glue with a glue stick to the end so I could attach them together. Levi now thinks he has to smile every time the camera is out, even if he's not looking at it. I discovered too lat...