7 December 2014

Gib and Abe are both playing basketball this winter.

By coincidence, they both have #7 on their team T-shirts.  They play on teams in different age divisions so they won't play each other except on the patio in the backyard.

While in the middle of unpacking from our trip, we started decorating for Christmas this week.  This meant we had decorations out on the floor most of the week. One morning Becky heard scrabbling in the hallway.  Lily was prowling through the Christmas garlands.  Maybe she felt like she was back in the wild.

Brandan hung the metal snowflake that he and Helen made earlier this year on our front porch.  He made the garlands this summer, inspired by the Christmas decorations at Disneyland, only on a smaller scale.

 Our advent this year celebrates the true joy brought by Jesus Christ.  The word "joy" is often misused at Christmastime, especially by advertisers.  The scriptures richly teach the true meaning of joy.  It was hard to narrow our advent to 24 scriptures-- we could easily keep going until Easter.  

Each white box on the tree contains a glittery tag.  On the back of each tag is written a scripture about the sources of joy.

 We celebrated St. Nicholas Day on Saturday.  To Becky's delight, no one remembered the date of St. Nicholas Day. This makes 20 straight years of surprising Brandan (and 17 years of surprising children) with candy in their shoes.

 Each child also got a special book this year.  Brandan didn't get a book because he has quite a stack of books lined up to read already and giving him another book might be a hostile act.  Brandan's everyday shoes were out of town with Brandan, so Becky filled one of his basketball shoes as a joke.

 Gib turned his chocolate bear into a ninja.

 Brandan flew to Salt Lake this week to be with his mom as she underwent surgery to remove cancer. Bluntly, the surgery was brutal and did not remove all the cancer as was hoped.  With few answers and many questions, we are fasting and praying for her.