Favorite (or just really good) Things

It has been a fun week! (And weekend too). We spent the evening with Robert's brother & family Friday night, along with his Mom (from Michigan) and grandparents from Dallas. We had a great meal - lots of goodies and lots of good wine too!
Well, since we were in 2 cars we went back the next day to pick up the one we left so we could all drive home in one car (my request) Lisa offered me a hutch/armoire/piece of furniture. I never (or not often) turn down free, and especially not furniture. So we have a new item in our kitchen now and I love it! I am so excited that Lisa did not need it anymore and passed it along to us!
We also made some great Christmas cookies yesterday and used lots of fun sprinkles from Betsy and some that we picked up in Michigan in an Amish Community there. The kids were excited to have some fun cookies and Robert and I had our share too!

Here are some pics of some other fun stuff. Here is the gang after our nightly Jesse Tree activity. We read a little devotion, ask the kids some questions about what that ornament represents and then we pray. The kids colored all the ornaments before we laminated them so they love to see who colored the one for that night, and if it is Little Girl, we do not hear the end of it from her!

After our Jesse Tree we move on to our new tradition for this year, their Chocolate Advent Calendars! The kids love that part! And I love that it reminds us all that we need to do the Jesse tree part, so hey, if a little chocolate gets us to do a nightly family devotion, BRING ON THE HERSHEYS! I think we can even say that studying the word of God is sweet like Chocolate to our spirit! What do you think?

Here is our tree this year, it is great the kids can almost cover the tree - it started out just the 18 inches around the bottom were covered with ornaments, but as you can see they are getting higher!

Here is our oldest with a family favorite for the tree - from Maine from The Lewis Family! This was when there were only 3 of us! Wow!

Here is our crazy boy with his favorite ornament, because he and dad made this one by themselves!

Here is our dear daughter one morning reading the newspaper! Gotta start them early!

But really, she is trying to figure out why her 2 older brothers now race Robert and I to the paper on the weekends! They want the comics and several ads, I am not sure how that interest happened!

So we are enjoying lots of fun things this season, and are looking forward to a few more (Gingerbread House at least!)!