6 December 2020

The countdown to Christmas has begun! We lit our first advent candle on Sunday, November 30.

 

Helen painted our Christmas card this year. We uploaded her design to a card company and the completed cards were delivered on Friday. 

She also painted this sign for our Christmas advent. Our theme this year is "the weary world rejoices" and we are celebrating the everlasting relief that comes from Jesus Christ.

Every night we read scriptures that help us rejoice in the Savior. We unwrap a photo frame that either shows a gift from Christ or is a picture of Christ.

By Christmas Day, this small tree will be covered with reminders of the hope, peace, joy and love we can feel now and eternally because of Jesus Christ.

Our third Christmas countdown is our Light the World calendar. A blessing of having every outside Christmas activity canceled is we have more time to be thoughtful about offering service this year.

One of our acts of service was to clean up a half size cello and a ¾ size violin to donate to a nearby school district that has a 5th grade orchestra. This is a photo of Gibson scraping the stickers off the fingerboard that his teacher used to help him place his fingers when he was a beginner. We hope whoever uses the cello and violin enjoy learning to play as much as Helen and Gibson do. 

Tuesday morning was impossibly golden and we saw one of the most beautiful sunrises of the year.

We haven't been inside the temple since March, but Becky has added a loop around the temple parking lot to her morning walk. We chose to move here to be close to the temple, never imagining a situation where we would live 5 minutes away and still not be able to attend as often as we liked. It feels good to stop by even if we can't go inside.

More service, this time at Craterworks. One of the elementary schools would like small tables with dry erase boards as tops for a kindergarten class. So far the boys have built 3 tables and started on a 4th. They learned how to use a pocket screw jig for this project.

It has been a long, slow slog, but the first trimester of school finally ended on Friday. Mostly the term stunk, but the kids did a good job filling up our "celebration of success" board, recording big wins and tiny triumphs. Trimester 2 starts tomorrow and school will continue to be 100% online.

Helen met some friends at the mall for some Christmas shopping. We actually felt better about them meeting at the mall than at a home since they have to keep their masks on at the mall.

More service: on Saturday Brandan went with a group of Young Men from our ward to cut down some Christmas trees.  From the left are Diego, Gibson, Eddy and Abe.

This is a photo of Abe helpfully cutting the tree stump shorter so the forest looked better after the group left.

The boys took one of the trees to a temporary RV lot that was recently built in our city. The city provided a variance to the building codes to allow about 10 families whose homes burned down this summer live in RVs while they wait for their homes to be rebuilt, a process that is expected to take about 2 years. We thought a community Christmas tree would provide some Christmas cheer and let the residents know our community welcomes them. The boys had more enthusiasm than patience for hanging Christmas lights so Brandan and Blake took the time to spread the lights out evenly on the tree.

Someone sent Brandan a photo of the tree lit up at night, along with the thanks of the neighbors who love the seeing the lights outside their RVs.

Abe and Abigail bought matching pajama bottoms, but Abe accidentally got an extra large pair. This is Gib trying them on.

Hemming the pajama bottoms gave Abe a chance to expand his skills. The pants are still very wide, but now they are the right length.

Today is St. Nicholas Day, the most fun holiday of the year. Everyone woke up to a shoe full of chocolate and a new book.

Gibson ignored his candy and started reading his book, Skyward, by Brandon Sanderson. immediately. He finished the book after dinner and started reading the sequel on his kindle.

The wise men have been performing gymnastics this year. Every family needs a child proof (or teenager proof!) nativity.