Christmas on the brain

It’s been a busy week. We had our community group Christmas party on Wednesday and it was a hoot. Everyone took part in the tradition of playing the Bob Bobertson song. I’ll post the video soon to help all of you who are wondering “Bob Bobertson? What the heck?” I’ll have to create a whole post just to explain it.

Friday I went up to Escondido early in the morning to get my car looked at and talk with my Dad. Afterwards, I met up with my brother for breakfast. Had a great time talking about stuff. I’m so proud of him. He is getting his masters (all A’s and his greek prof told him he has the makings to be a greek scholar), leads the college group, works part time for my dad, is in charge of missions, overseas small groups (getting ready to hand that off though), is an elder and still finds time to be with people and make them feel like the most important thing going on. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t sleep at all though. After breakfast we picked up my nana and took her out to finish her christmas shopping and wrapped all the gifts she had. It is just too hard for her to do that stuff now. I’ve taken her to finish her shopping for the past 5 years or so and it’s one of my favorite traditions. My grandparents were always very involved in our lives. When my mom passed away, I don’t know what I would’ve done without them. They helped me keep it all together. My nana took over my home schooling. She should get some kind of national recognition just for that. She put up with a lot from me. She became one of my dearest friends during the hardest part of my life. After spending the day in Escondido I headed home to change and go to “The Habitat” and see old friends. 

Adam’s family came over tonight. They brought dinner and we watched Home Alone. A true Christmas classic. I feel like a little kid waiting for Christmas to come. I’m not sure what it is this year, but I’m just really excited about it. We are really blessed with our families and friends and I just find myself really appreciating everyone around us so much. It’s interesting to see who God places in our lives through different parts of the journey. I’m excited for the year to come. I think it holds a lot of new stuff for us but stuff that God has been preparing our hearts to do over the past year.

Before Adam’s parents came over, I was baking biscotti. Something I do every year and am pretty good at. I don’t know what happened, but the first batch came out all messed up. It nearly stole my christmas cheer with every crumble. I’m still not sure what all happened. I’ve never had anything like that happen while cooking/baking before. It will remain the Christmas mystery I guess. The second batch came out perfect. Strange.

Spent a lot of time wrapping presents yesterday. I don’t know why, but I really love to wrap presents. It’s probably one of my favorite things to do around the holidays.

The gifts are under the tree, the goodies are nearly baked, party going is almost complete and it’s time to settle in and just relax.

The Christmas Friends

The album is finished! The majority of our time the past two and a half weeks has been spent on this album. It’s nice for it to be complete. Now we can kick back in some Christmas PJ’s, drink hot chocolate and enjoy this wonderful album. Guess what? You can too and it is FREE! Pretty awesome right? Consider it a very special gift from Adam and I to you.

Christmas Friends is done, Christmas gifting is about 99.99% done, feeling pretty great about all this.

It was a busy weekend but a great one. Really enjoyed meeting the people from The Ecclesia Collective. Looking forward to doing and being a lot more in this community. I’ll save some of my other thoughts for a time where I’ve actually gotten more than 3 hours of sleep. I tend to sound like a crazy person without a proper amount of sleep. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Craftiness ;)

There has been a lot going over the past couple weeks. Adam and I have been recording a lot (he’s actually working on a song right now), Christmas decorating and festivities seem to consume most of our time. It’s been wonderful. Sipping hot cocoa, having friends over to watch holiday movies and just staring at our Christmas tree. I’ve decided that for the month of December I’m not going to take on any special projects around the house like organizing the bookcase and cleaning out our closets (yuck). I tend to do those kinds of things on my days off or extra hours here and there. For this month I’ve decided to just enjoy the season. This wonderful time of year and what God is doing in my life. A year into marriage and I’m still twitterpated. Life is too short to not enjoy such things. I’m going to be doing things for the enjoyment of creating and doing and learning things that I want to. Not doing things I feel like I have to. I made some of our Christmas decorations. I’m working on making a bunch of treats for Christmas. We have been working on the Christmas Friends album for about 2 weeks. I arranged the song my brother and I did. I’m very excited about it. It’s definitely the best song I’ve put together even if I didn’t write the song. It’s really old. I’m just really excited about how far I’ve come to be able to learn how to play instruments I have no “training” in and bring it all together to create something new. It feels good.

I’m going to work on some embroidery now. Here are some poorly taken pictures of what I’ve done so far. www.craftydaisies.com has these patterns for printing in their embroidery lessons.

1st project

2nd project

3rd project

Recording

Adam and I are working on our Christmas song right now. It’s been a crazy recording weekend. It’s been fun but also really difficult. Adam and I are both stubborn and when you’re working together that’s not a good thing. Learning a lot though. Played the drums, banjo and organ this weekend. The organ tried to kill me. I’m really excited to see how the overall compliation turns out.

Back to work.

A fall like Thanksgiving

I’m really excited because it’s raining outside! I can’t remember the last time it’s actually felt like fall on Thanksgiving. It’s usually in the 80′s. It’s definitely a welcome change for me.

Well, Adam is once again shut up in the music room working on recording something for Christmas friends and I’m trying to not completely scorch my mouth with my indian food. It’s almost time to leave for Night of Worship at church today. I’m pretty pumped for tonight. I’m ready to be on the other end of the stage worshipping. My heart is full and just ready to praise him tonight.

So, the holidays… Holidays have held such a mixed amount of emotions for me since my Mom passed away. Holidays were her thing. Parties were her thing. She was definitely the life of the party. So, holidays have come with excitement and sorrow ever since. Well, I think I can say that for the first time in 9 years (geez, can’t believe it’s been that long) the excitement is coming without the sorrow. That is not to say that it is still not difficult, it’s just different now. Not easier, just different. I don’t think it ever gets easier, it just gets (as I already said) different. God has certainly been working in my heart and I am just so thankful for my family and friends. I am so greatly blessed. It’s not just head knowledge either. I think a lot of times people, christians especially, know how they should think/feel/talk or can see that things are true but it’s different to know it. It’s different to live it and it’s different to feel it.

This song has just been playing though my head constantly for the past few days.

“One day eyes that are blind will see you clearly
And one day all who deny will finally believe
One day hearts made of stone will break in pieces
And one day chains once unbroken will fall down at your feet
So we wait for that one day come quickly

We want to see your Glory
Every knee falls down before thee
Every tongue offers you praise
With every hand raised
Singing Glory
To you and unto you only
We’ll sing Glory to Your name

One day voices that lie will all be silent
One day all that’s divided will be whole again
One day death will retreat and wave it’s white flag
One day love will defeat the strongest enemy
So we wait for that one day come quickly

We know not the day or the hour
Or the moments in between
But we know the end of the story
When we’ll see”

Nichole Nordeman – “Glory”

Pretty much says it all.