Christmas is past and its time to look back on the year.  It's time to take stock on those resolutions that were made or not.  It's time to reevaluate the important things in my life.  It's time to see both the successes and the failures.  It is really time for me to be thankful for the blessings in my life.  I am blessed to have an understanding husband who loves me and is patient with me, even when I am depressed with no reason to be depressed.  He is the picture of kindness and shows concern for me when I am struggling and not treating him or the rest of the family nicely.  He racks his brain and goes out of his way to help even if I don't seem to want help, he knows that I need it.  I am humbled that after all I put him through, he still says that he is blessed to be married to me.  I am humbled, confused, grateful and totally in love with him.  I am blessed to have a 15 year old son.  There are many days that I want to ring his neck and yell at him but then he shares a little bit of his life and his struggles with me.  I see those bits as diamonds and am grateful that despite my yelling and getting in his space that he still wants to share himself with me.  I am blessed to have a 13 year old that is inquisitive, imaginative, and inventive.  I love his ideas and that he wants to share those ideas with me.  I love that he likes to try new things and isn't afraid of what other's think of him.  I love that he still needs the hugs in the mornings and reassurance at night after watching a scary movie like the Hobbit.  I am blessed to have a daughter that is relational.  She notices every new thing I purchase, she is thoughtful towards her friends and her family.  She needs to be encouraged when doing hard things that are out of her comfort zone and that I can encourage her.  I am blessed that we have this year of homeschooling together even though it's hard.  I am blessed to have friends who listen and understand.  They come over and don't leave even when I'm not nice and tell them to take my kids and go away.  I have friends who understand and lift me up when I become difficult.  I am blessed to have friends who willingly take my children and love on them.  I am blessed to have a mother who is one of my best friends.  She has listened and allowed us to take chances even if she doesn't always agree, she waits and then offers some advice quietly and respectfully; allowing us to have time to think about it.  There are so many other blessings but these are the most important to me because they model Christ to me in the very little things that they do especially when I am not so lovely, yet they show me love.  I am trying to be transparent and allow others in but its hard and hurts and is scary. I want to have this life of peace and beauty and don't want to share the ugliness but that isn't reality.  This last year has been overall one of many shared adventures with smiles but with the peaks of beauty has come the depths of ugliness.  I am looking forward to this new year knowing that again there will be peaks that are lovely and beautiful and full of joy and awe but there will also me these times that are the opposite.  I pray that I may help others in their depths like they have helped me in mine.  I pray that I have learned something about myself.  I pray that I may be a blessing to my family and friends like they have blessed me.

My gentleman husband, always willing to stretch forth  his hand to help me along

I have this idea in my head of how I want to my house to look.  I've said before that I like the layout of the house, I like the bones of the house.  I just want to change the feel of the house.  I love the Potterybarn look.  I like traditional/classic styles.  But my house was built by men and because of that, it has no style except spec home grade style.  I've been working towards a certain style but I don't always know who to make the correct choices to get me going in that direction.  For Christmas John bought me a new faucet for the downstairs bathroom.  It was to replace the ugly gold and silver showy faucet.  In order to replace the faucet though, we had to take the sink off the wall so that we could replace the drank plug because it used a different system for the drain.  We pretty much ripped the sink off the wall, which meant that we needed to patch and repaint the bathroom.  Since we were repainting the bathroom we might as well take the tank off the toilet so we could paint behind the toilet. Since we needed to buy new parts to put the tank back on the toilet we might as well replace the toilet handle.  While getting a new toilet handle John thought we should just replace the sink at the same time.  It was off the wall and had a crack in the basin so this was the perfect time to replace that as well.  It really reminded me of the book; If You Give A Mouse A Cookie
It took about two days but the downstairs bathroom is done.  I've ordered some of my photos for the wall and am looking through the rest of the photos for more to put in there.  Then I have decided to replace the light switches and the door handle as well.  That is next month.  However I have to say that I am excited the way it turned out. I've ordered three photos to go in this frame by the sink. I am also perusing my other photos to place over the toilet and on the opposite wall with an adventure spirit in them.  It's exactly the feel that I have wanted for my house.  Now I just have to figure out how to carry that feel onto the rest of the house.

This summer while at Cannon Beach, I scooped up some sand into a container with the sole intention of using it to make ornaments.  I have been saving it for about six months wanting to use it just for this activity.  Finally there was enough time to make ornaments with the kids.  So I placed the ornaments out, the hot glue, the sand, and other assortments of things to go into an ornament.  Lona filled the ornament with sand, placed a sand dollar inside, and then proceeded to decorate the outside with glittered pine cones, and a tag that says Cannon Beach.  She's all crafty girl.  Job on the other hand, wanted to use this glittered snow instead of sand, then wanted to hot glue this plastic branch to the bottom with snow around.  He placed the snow inside and then decided he needed the snow out.  Then decided that the branch was too long and cut but then it was too short.  He needed another branch.  Placing hot glue at the end of the branch and slipping it into the ornament without getting glue all over the place and before it dried was a challenge.  Finally he did it and placed the snow back into the ornament.  We took photos of the finished product and slipped it on the tree.  About an hour later John came home and Job ran to get his ornament that he worked hard on.  He pulled it off the tree and it slipped out of his hand shattering on the floor.  All his hard work into pieces at his feet.  We made another but it wasn't the same.  I love his sensitive heart.  It gives him a gentle and quiet spirit.  Again Isaac didn't participate.  I do miss him involved and I think that he will regret this decision.  It is just an age but will pass.

We again made gingerbread houses this year.  The only difference was that it was only Job and Lona making the houses. One year we tried to make our own gingerbread houses from scratch.  Fail.  We've used kits that we had to put the houses together.  Again those fail because they were too young.  We finally settled on preassembled kits.  Loved those from Costco and Trader Joes.  This year I found a whole village at Target.  Yes, they'll each do a house.  I forgot that Isaac pretty much has decided that the advent activities are beneath him.  He's the Grinch this year.  I gave them the kit and was a little disappointed that they had to assemble the houses themselves.  However they were old enough this time around to do it on their own.  The only draw back was the attention span for this.  I know they are older but the whole intention is for a quick fun activity not a 3 day drawn out event.  In the end though it was worth it.  I've even started thinking about baking our own gingerbread house provided that I purchase a mold.  I had no idea that they had such things until I started looking into gingerbread house cutters and found molds that can be purchased.  Hmm, maybe we can do a from scratch thing.  Then we went to a Christmas work party and the gal again made these very cute snowmen.  She graciously sent some home with us and they fit perfectly in our village.  We may have to learn how to make them.  I think they must be easy, pipe three circles of dough together and bake. Then add a chocolate chip for a hat and pipe frosting scarves, dust with powdered sugar.  We weren't quite done making our village and had to go out for something, when we returned a house was decorated.  Isaac was the only one at home, but he swore that he had nothing to  do with it.  I think that he secretly wanted to participate but it's no longer the "cool" thing to do.  Maybe next year.

Friday we woke to our world blanketed in white and still it was coming down in big heavy wet white flakes.  It's unusual here and doesn't hang around for long.  John came downstairs to hear the school district leave a message on our answering machine saying school would be delayed for two hours.  If they were going to go to school, the time to play in the snow was now at 6:00 in the morning.  I roused the willing ones up and they headed outside while I made cinnamon rolls.  Oh, not from scratch but the kind that pops out of a can.  Easy enough.  When I looked outside I realized that they were playing soccer.  Really, they have all year to play and when it snows is the time they voluntarily kick the ball around. Next time I looked out they had taken the Styrofoam cooler that Isaac receives his medication in and used it as a mold for the snow bricks they were making.  They had out the wheel barrow to collect snow and place in the middle of the driveway.  That was their quarry.  They packed the cooler and were working on the first layer when I brought out our large electric water pot.  I placed it on a TV tray along with powdered hot cocoa, Styrofoam cups and plastic lids.  They had everything they needed to keep playing in the snow.  Next time I looked out the window, there were almost every neighborhood kid in our front yard, building on the fort, throwing snowballs or playing with the sleds.  The best thing, I was inside were it was peaceful and quiet and the fun was outside loud and busy.

It's not often that John's Dad calls us asking if he can come up.  So when he does we clear our schedule as much as we can.  He arrived Saturday while Lona and I were at her dance rehearsal.  We walked in the house to hear him on his new toy: a karaoke machine.  Isaac about died.  He is not into singing, especially into a microphone.  John made lunch as we all hung out in the kitchen listening to John's Dad belt out tune after tune.  He isn't bad at all.  I never would have pegged him for a singer but ever since he crushed his arm between the cab and the arm of an excavator he's needed to find something to do. That was last year. John's Dad is this amazing work horse of a guy.  He is constantly working on his house or property.  I think it keeps him young.  Well, in shape at least.  Since he hasn't had full use of his arm and can't work like he wants he has turned that unused energy into singing and thought we would like to join the fun.  And join the fun we did.  We are terrible singers.  It is amazing how bad we are.  We can't hold a tune or be in tune to begin with, but without the pressure of others, it is fun.  Job arrived home later from a sleep over and as soon as he found out that there was a karaoke machine here, he was hamming it up.  He loved it.  Isaac on the other hand wouldn't touch it until the next day when we were totally alone.  How different these boys are.