A Houseful of Fun

The house is pretty crowded right now! There are 19 people staying here altogether:

Grandpa,

Grandma,

Uncle Travis,

Aunt Margaret,

Camryn,

Ethan,

Sloan,

Isaac,

 Uncle Noah,

Aunt Marina,

and the nine of us.

The dining room looks like this:

And upstairs there are air mattresses and sleeping bags set up everywhere.

Christmas Love

Christmas is supposed to be a joyful time to look forward to, but often it becomes a time of selfishness and greed, of stress and busyness, of disappointment when you don't get the gift you wanted. No family will have a perfect Christmas, but you can have a very blessed and joyful one! There is only one simple key: LOVE. Christmas is all about Christ, and Christ is Love! He has commanded us to love one another, and Christmas is a time to remember this; a time to set aside for loving others. Why, then, is there such self-centeredness? Why has Christmas begun to mean presents, Santa Claus, sweets, and ME? We have turned our back on Christ and replaced Him with Santa. Rather, we have replaced Him with ourselves; caring only about what WE want and not responding when He asks us to love and obey Him. Christmas is over, but we can keep the spirit of Christmas, Christ's love, in our hearts year-round. If we bless other people, it will bless us much more than it will them! And most importantly, it will bring glory to God. And that is our ultimate goal.

Bright Lights Christmas Party

 singing Christmas carols after tea and dessert

 'Act 4' of the Christmas story

 The gift exchange

Four Christmases!

We're having 'Christmas' and opening presents four times this year! First was with Grandpa and Grandma Davis, then we did it with Grandpa and Grandma Peterson yesterday, then we'll have our family Christmas on the 25th, and lastly with our aunts, uncles, and cousins in Florida. There's been a lot of Christmas shopping going on lately! Grandpa and Grandpa Peterson are leaving tomorrow for Florida, which is why we had Christmas with them early.

This evening Cecily and I have Bright Lights! We're having a Christmas party and gift exchange. We have been sooo blessed to be able to attend Bright Lights this semester! Hopefully I will remember tonight to take some pictures for a blog post, but if not, Allison has been doing a great job of blogging at http://brightlightsofallon.blogspot.com/.

Concert, Concert, Concert!

To get caught up on all the concerts we've sung at lately:

The SCCCHE homeschool concert was December 2nd. My sweet friend Mary just emailed me some pictures of our family singing at it, so here they are! Thank you Mary!

Hmmm... maybe we need to work on our appearance. Such as smiles. :) And... Bjorn. :D If these pictures were videos, you would also see that Rosemary dropped her pacifier and tried to sing very loudly. :)
Yesterday was our church's dessert theater, and the dinner theater was the day before. The program was a variety show, with the church chancel choir, children's choir, and handbell choir, an orchestra, four short skits, and a few other music groups such as the Peterson Family Singers. Knut and I got to do one of the skits: The Great Parking Space Race.

Grandpa and Grandma Peterson should be arriving here tomorrow! They'll stay here for a few days and have an early Christmas with us. Two or three days before the 25th, they'll leave for Florida, where our uncle and his family have just moved. We'll be going there also, but Papa and Mom have to do the Christmas Eve services at Troy UMC, so we'll leave on the 26th. Our uncle Noah and his wife Marina will also be there, so it will really be a houseful! This will be one fun family reunion!

Lyceum Singers party

These past few days have been a whirlwind! The SCCCHE concert was Thursday, I had my Bright Lights leadership meeting on Saturday, and Sunday was church, the Mascoutah Community Christmas Concert, and Knut's FLL finals. Knut's team was in fourth place in the robot runs and got an award for the best solution to their biomedical issue! They didn't advance, but I heard that it went pretty well! We weren't able to be there since we were singing at the Mascoutah Christmas concert, but he says that their team did great! :)
Tonight we had our Lyceum Singers party, and we went caroling. We were only expecting a few people, but the house was full! Almost everyone showed up with their families. The time went so quickly it seemed like only fifteen minutes instead of almost three hours! Now we're wishing that we could do this again next week. :)
Right before the party we had a little excitement. Thor was riding across the dining room on one of our little blue scooters when it tipped over. His nose bled, his lip was cut, and one tooth was knocked loose. Mom bundled him into the car quickly to go see the dentist... half an hour before people were supposed to start arriving. I came downstairs after doing some tidying to be met by Cecily giving me Mom's hurried instructions to feed everyone supper and finish setting up the dining room. She explained what had happened and I groaned. Why does everything happen just when you need things to go smoothly? Papa arrived home soon afterward. Mom had called him right before she left, and he had met her and given her the cell phone in case she needed to call us. Cecily, Gloria, Bjorn, and I had dinner after saying a prayer for Thor, and Papa and Knut did some work outside. Fifteen minutes before six, Papa and Knut came in to have dinner. Ten minutes later, they were still eating and the first knock was heard at the door. I'm afraid we were a little inhospitable and left our guests sitting in the living room while Cecily and I frantically cleaned up the kitchen and everyone else ate. :) With the next knock at the door, Mom and Thor came in with the guests. Thor's lip and nose were swollen and red, but he was (more or less) smiling.
After that everything went smoothly. Papa gave a couple house tours, and everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time. Some people had some trouble finding their kids when it was time to leave, but I think everyone went home with the right number of people. :)