pretty, happy, funny, real

~pretty, happy, funny, real~

Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life.  

For more great {p,h,f,r} visit Like Mother Like Daughter, this Thursday and every Thursday.

Last year I started a Little Women Hospitality Group.  Do you know about this program?  If you have daughters in the 10-14 age range you might want to look into it.  In our case, the group came about as a way to be sure that our oldest (who is the most social creature we've ever known) gets to see ALL her friends on a regular basis.  It's fairly easy for me to schedule an afternoon for one of the other girls to come over and play, but this group allows a bunch of girls to get together twice each month.  We have 12 "Little Women" in our group.   On this particular day we learned about setting a formal table.  As you can see, we also practiced arranging flowers to be used as a centerpiece, or other decoration.  I love having fresh flowers in the house, so it was neat for me to see how much the girls enjoyed this activity.

{pretty}

She is one happy girl.  Her top front teeth have been missing since August.  It seems that some kids lose the baby tooth, and then the "big" tooth appears quickly, but in this case we don't see any sign of the big teeth making an appearance.  I love that she's had no teeth in the front for so long.  It's the perfect look for a 6 year old.  This face could make anyone happy!

{happy}

We had some flooring installed last week.  One of the installers was friendly and fun and the little girls quickly made friends with him.  Do your kids do that too?  It's not like we have people working in our house all the time, but when we do the girls always want to make friends.  This particular guy was kind enough to let the girls try out his headphones.  I just assumed that the headphones kept out the noise of the hammering, sawing, sanding, etc. but apparently, they had a radio built in.
One of the girls loudly declared, "I hear cowboy music!"

{funny}

When we moved to this house a couple months ago, we dropped cable and the land line.  Mark has been an almost exclusive cell phone user for a couple years, so this was a non-issue for him.  It really wasn't a big deal for me either, but the phone I had was several years old, so we thought it might be a good time to upgrade.

So a few days ago I dropped the new phone.  Apparently.  I don't really remember it taking a fatal fall.  But fall it must have.  The front screen is shattered.  But, no worries, right?  We bought insurance!

I sauntered into the Verizon store expecting to receive a brand-spanking-new phone.  Nope.  The helpful employee explained to me that there is an "administration fee" to make a claim - and the phone has to be sent to some other company, etc. etc.  Ugh.  I'm not entirely sure my phone has a retail value equal to the "administration fee."

So, where is all this taking us?  To my phone, which I'm happy to report, works just as wonderfully as on the day I got it.  And thanks to some skillfully applied scotch tape, there are no shards of glass falling into my ear or embedding in my cheek.  I'll get a new one soon - there are just more important things happening at the moment - but for now the tape fix is fine.

{real}

Gaudete!

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance.  The Lord is at hand." (Philippians 4: 4-5)

Here at Aspen Springs, we are joyfully anticipating the celebration of the Lord's coming at Christmas.  
As was related in an earlier post, we acquired our Christmas tree a few weeks ago.  After a few weeks of sitting in a bucket of water in the sun room, the tree was brought into the house on Gaudete Sunday.  We knew we wanted to get a tree that would fill the highest space in the living room - and this one certainly does that!

For most of the day, we worked together on the first round of preparing our home for Christmas:

Mark put lights on the tree

The girls made paper chains, snowflakes, and paintings of angels

Colleen got out the Nativity scene(s) and carefully stowed the baby Jesus figures in the same place so that none of them get lost or misplaced.  It's a small thing, but isn't it wonderful how exciting it is for kids to look for baby Jesus on Christmas morning?

The girls call this "the glass Jesus set".  It's Waterford crystal (a gift from Colleen's parents) and it's beautiful.

This set is obviously more kid-oriented - we don't mind if they touch this one!  It's sitting on the windowsill in the kitchen - a great place for everyone to see it each day.

And, finally, the "traditional" nativity.  This one is beautiful too.  The holy family figures were wedding gifts from an aunt and uncle; we have added more pieces throughout the years.

So, are your preparations underway?  It seems that everywhere we go we hear people talking about whether or not the shopping is finished - and that is important, in it's own way - but that's not the most important preparation for Christmas.  And neither are the decorations in our home, right?  It's the preparation in our hearts that really matters.  Hopefully our hearts - and our homes - are carefully prepared to joyfully receive the Lord at Christmas.

Makes me think of a hymn.  Did you sing "On Jordan's Bank" this Sunday?


On Jordan's bank, the Baptist's cry
Announces that the Lord is nigh;
Awake, and hearken, for he brings
Glad tidings of the King of kings!

Then cleansed be every heart from sin;
Make straight the way of God within;
Prepare we in our hearts a home
Where such a mighty Guest may come.

All praise, eternal Son, to Thee,
Whose advent sets Thy people free;
Whom with the Father we adore
And Holy Spirit forever more. 

Hurray for the Blaze King!

It's really cold here today.  Come to think of it, it's been unusually cold for probably 3 days now.  This is our 3rd winter here, so we're getting used to what's "normal" - and normal for early December would be something like 29.  Today's high was 8 and last night the temperature dropped to about 5 below.  That's not record-setting - by any means - but it certainly feels cold.  And, of course, we're having issues with our heat.  Isn't that the way it always goes?  But all is well; There's a huge fire in the basement keeping us warm.

We have a Blaze King wood stove.  The thing is a beast.  It really is.  It puts out enough heat that we're hardly noticing the lack of our electric heat.  Take a look at the features:

We have a nice big wood pile, so we'll be cozy until the weather warms up a bit - or the breaker for the electric heaters gets fixed - which, of course, will probably happen at the same time :)

Besides the fact that the Blaze King is keeping us warm, I love the smell.  It's sort of like a campfire without the actual camping.  It's also delightful to sit in the basement on the comfy couch and watch a movie while the fire blazes.  Makes me warm and sleepy just thinking about it!

pretty, happy, funny, real

Another Thursday linkup with Like Mother Like Daughter...

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

~capturing the context of contentment in everyday life~

{pretty}

snow, ice, rock, trees, mountains...yep, it's pretty

{happy}

Sisters sharing a room.  They each have a bed, but this is how we found them one lazy morning over the Thanksgiving weekend.

{funny}

No one was really "policing" the whipped cream, so she made the most of the opportunity!

{real}

A leak in the laundry room ceiling - ON THANKSGIVING!  It doesn't get more real.  The good thing is that Mark found the source of the problem and fixed it up without much stress or toil.  Oh, and I'm aware that the laundry room is quite ugly.  Give us time :)