Monday, November 19, 2012

Cuddles and Fun

First off...how cute are these 2 girlys :)

Ok...moving on.
We had a fun weekend here last weekend, including going with some friends to Kirkwood to a little holiday event they were having.  SK loves being with friends and had a blast playing with her buds!  They were giving out hot chocolate and hot dogs (yep...at 9 in the morning, my child scarfed a hot dog!)
After playing for a bit, the crowd settled down and we waited in line to see Santa and get a pic :)
For those of you who have followed my blog, in years past I have talked about how we have chosen for our family to not do the Santa thing, but we aren't going to pretend that he doesnt exist at all...does that make sense?  We are trying to show that he is similar to other fun characters like Tangled or Snow White.  We are planning and have tried to show Sarah Kate (and Evelyn as she gets older) how St. Nicholas was really a cool dude back in his day.  Our hope for our children is to make Christmas about what it is actually supposed to be about, CHRIST!  It really makes us sick how we have really massacred Christ's birthday.  We have made it a time where we celebrate everything but Christ.  We worry and stress over get togethers, events, gifts, ect.  The gift thing has really bugged us this year.  We have realized this year that SK was beginning to get really excited about the gifts this year and not about celebrating Christ.  Our hope this year is to make the time we spend celebrating "Christmas" is spent focussing on our Savior.
So ways we are trying to do this:
--We will again do our Jesse Tree like we have in years past (You can check out my blog from 2 years ago and see how we do it if you are interested)
--We don't do Santa.  We don't want to talk about everything Sk sees at the store is a good "idea for her Christmas list".
--We have really slimmed down the decorations over the last few years.  The year before we moved, we didn't have a tree or any decoration in our house.  Do we sound Bahhumbug ish?  It was a lovely Christmas really.  We loved it in a lot of ways.  We did our Jesse Tree and that was it.  That year we decided to get rid of many of our decorations for many reasons.  We want to simplify.  It works for our family and helps us to focus on Christ.

Now don't take this wrong.  We know every family finds things that work for them.  We are not here to judge or think that our way is the best or only way things should be done.  We just find these things have helped us.
We do see the importance to step back sometimes and look at why we do the things we do.  I encourage you to do that.  I think it is good to take a step back and say, "Why do we give gifts at Christmas?" or "Why do we decorate Christmas trees?" or there are a multitude of questions you could ask.
I think for us we realized that there might not be a good reason sometimes.  Even getting off the subject of Christmas, we have done the same stepping back and regrouping at how we are approaching our parenting.  One big thing we have looked at this week is looking at rules we were enforcing in our household that weren't there for any other reason except for our selfishness.  We have learned that if we can't give a good reason for having a particular rule in our home then we don't need to have it.  For instance...A rule to obey us is important, but a rule to not play in ways that just might annoy us or get in our way of doing what we want to be doing is not good.  We must always ask ourselves why we are doing what we're doing rather than just doing what everyone else does or what we think is convenient.  We can be selfish people sometimes, if I am completely honest.

Anyways, that is enough rambling.  It might be a bit scattered, so sorry.  That is what you get when you are still waking in the middle of the night and holding a baby while blogging too :)
I will end with some cute pics of our fun last Sat. that I started out talking about before going off rambling...


 good friends hold hands right :)  Young and old...

1 comment:

  1. I feel the same way about Santa. I don't bring it up but I don't leave it out completely. I don't taunt the kids about being good cause Santa won't bring you any gifts. Whatever way you choose for your family I think as long as it glorifies God is the "right" way to celebrate Christmas.

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