December 5- Make Christmas Cards

Less than 20 days until Christmas and not a single gift has been wrapped.  They are almost all made or purchased, but I haven't touched the wrapping paper yet.  Time to get on that!

Our scripture passage that we read today was from Mark: 35-41.  In this passage Christ calms the stormy sea.  From this scripture we learn that Jesus had power over the elements.  He was powerful and we should have faith in his power in our lives

Today we made Christmas cards for our grandparents for our advent activity.  My girls are still young so we didn't do anything fancy.  I printed off some coloring pages for them and they went to work.

 Lily takes her coloring very seriously.

 Charlotte just likes to move her pencil across the page.

  Lily wrote little messages inside them and signed her name as well as Charlotte and Gideon's for them.

Gideon played with us while we colored.  He is working really hard on learning to sit up on his own and he is so happy about it.

Christmas Letter

You know those big long letters that you get in the mail at Christmas time summarizing the past year for a family?  I'm not good at writing those.  So this year on our Christmas cards I just put a link to our family blog address.  A bit impersonal I suppose, sorry if it offends, but honestly if you'd like to know what we have been up to it is all right here.

Here's a synopsis.  The year started out with us finding out that we were expecting a little boy.  The girls went on a naughtiness rampage that lasted for weeks and culminated in this event which left my sanity hanging by a thread.  Charlotte had the audacity to turn two, can you believe it?  We spent some time crafting and sewing, grandma and grandpa Hansen came for a visit and then the craziness of May set in.  Lily turned four, Tyson breezed his way through finals and we celebrated his birthday, Gideon decided to show up a bit early, Tyson started training at a second job and then changed his role out at the prison all while I'm adjusting to parenting 3 children.  May was a wild ride!  Continuing on; Lily had her big end of the year dance recital and started playing tee-ball while Charlotte adjusted to her role as a big sister.  We spent the summer camping, at the lake, and visiting family in Utah.  These settled down again in the fall with Tyson back in school and preschool starting up again.  We had a fun Halloween, I decided to run an insane half marathon five months after having a baby, and now we are full swing into the holiday season.

This has been a wonderful year for our family.  We keep plugging away at our simple little life here in Idaho and we love it!

We hope that everyone finds the love, peace, and joy that the Christmas Season and our Savior Jesus Christ have to offer.

Love to all!

Tyson, Jennifer, Lily, Charlotte, and Gideon