The real meaning of Christmas...

As our first Christmas as a married couple grew closer and closer, we weren't entirely sure how we wanted to celebrate. We knew we were going to do a few things differently once we had kids (for example, Santa is going to look completely different in our house. A good response about why, and how we believe about this issue is found here). But there is so much more to Christmas than celebrating with or without Santa! We want to celebrate and remember Jesus' coming.

With fewer and fewer days to really dive in and think about these things, we decided to go away for Christmas. It would be a great break and time of refreshment in our own lives, but it would also give us a chance to think about how the years to come might look at Christmas time in our home. There were a lot of things we talked about, so this might become several posts.

We try to make a habit of family worship time every day, and want to do the same for Christmas, with a little more tradition and intention.
Our church (which for those curious is a member of the PCA) likes to celebrate the liturgical calendar seasons, and so we've become interested in knowing those as well. It turns out that the color to mark the season of Advent (Christmas) is actually purple. Christmas day is white/gold (go jackets :) - just kidding!). Anyways we talked about incorporating some of these colors (not that color is everything) to remind us to be worshiping corporately as the body of Christ as well as individually and as a family.

My husband also created a worship service incorporating the advent candles. Which again aren't a necessary thing to do, but can be really fun, and worshipful. The candles consists of 5 candles (4 candles placed around 1 center candle). One of the 4 is to be lit for each Sunday in Advent, and then the one in the center on Christmas Day. (We did them all on Christmas day this first year). The first one loosely stands for Hope, second for Love, third for Joy, fourth for Peace, and the 5th stands for Christ. Each Sunday we'll talk about one of these topics, and how it relates to Christ's birth into the world, and His second coming. There are scripture readings and hymns to sing along with it. Maybe next year around Christmas time I'll post more details about this family worship service. But it was a wonderful time of talking together, reading God's word, being humbled through the remembrance of His initial birth into the world, and looking forward to celebrating His second coming! We sung wonderful, and well-related hymns through-out (like Come Thou long expected Jesus, Joy to the World, etc.) but my wonderfully creative husband ended the worship time with a song that shows a little bit of our own family's flair! Check it out! :)

We also remembered to bring our camera this time!! WOO!! Sorry some are side-ways. I will try to fix later.

Here are some pictures of the scenery, God gave us great weather all weekend!

One thing we KNOW we will be doing for Christmas, is CELEBRATING!! What better way to celebrate than with GREAT food and drinks! We ate like kings and queens this weekend!! And here is the wonderful food, I'll give recipes later:

Homemade Chocolate-mint chip cookies, and doulbe chocolate cookies, with our favorite celebration drink, Rosa Regale:

Philly Cheese Steaks & Sweet potato fries:

Some home-made cheese-its and local sodas for snacking:

Christmas Eve Shrimp & Gruyere Grits...INCREDIBLE:

Christmas Day Beef Wellington!! My favorite!! (Was supposed to also have some tasty veggies with it, but I felt a little under the weather this day, and so without me in the kitchen, my husband cooked the meat, and it was plenty!!)

We also watched Charlie Brown's Christmas movie!

Merry Christmas!

I'm Awake!

I generally feel pretty low when I don't wake up on time. My husband has an amazing (but what some might call "inhuman") ability to stay up late and jump out of bed early. Before we were married, I worked full time, and my schedule was: go to sleep at a reasonable time, wake up at the last possible minute to throw on clothes, grab food for lunch, and get to work on time. Goal: get 8 hours of sleep or more. I love sleep.


We've chosen that I will make the meals for our family, because this works best for our time together, and saves us money (plus I love to cook). We can get a few more minutes of sleep if I make breakfast and lunch while he gets ready for work. He's totally capable of making his own meals, but without me he'd most likely buy his meals (to save time).

I love to do this for him. When I'm on top of my game, I love being able to hand him a bag of food and give him a kiss at the door. It's sweet, he knows I love him, he is so grateful (which make me feel loved) and it makes us both countdown the hours till he's home again.

Yesterday morning though, I didn't wake up on time. I barely got a sandwich made and oatmeal thrown in a tupperware (w/o hot water) before it was time for him to leave. (I actually held him up). I feel bad when this happens, because it doesn't save us time, and he's still going to have to buy something else to eat with the sandwich (even though we have plenty of food in the house, and actually NEED to eat it so it won't go bad). Also because I'm rushed and he's clock-watching, neither of us feel super loved as he leaves. Don't get me wrong, we both love each other, and we both know that. He isn't mad at me when I don't get it right. Feeling loved is different than being loved, and as any married person will know, you don't always feel loved. When I don't wake up on time, it becomes one of those times. We learned about this in a couple of books you can find on the "Read" tab. (5 Love Languages & His Needs, Her Needs).

Anyways...

A few things I've learned about waking up when married:
I need my own alarm clock. Even if it goes off at the same time as his. I've realized it is false to believe I will wake up just because an alarm goes off, and my husband boldly jumps out of bed.

I need to set several alarms. Even if I wake up to the first one, I've realized it's also false to believe that I will get out of the bed once I wake up. I often fall back asleep. So I need to set a few alarms a couple minutes apart from each other.

Progress:
One thing I have gotten better at though, is timing. Once I'm awake and in the kitchen, I'm much better at cooking breakfast & lunch. I used to be slow at this, but now I've learned to cook multiple things simultaneously! So thankful that God is helping me learn! Getting better at waking up, is something I still want to do.

So anyways, this morning was much better than yesterday morning! Plus, it's Friday! I'll leave you with a couple of weekend songs:

One that's probably already stuck in your head because I said "It's Friday":

And, incase you accidentally watched the above video, here's a better one (to hopefully get that first out of your head):

Either way the weekend is finally here!

Go Jackets!

Cost-Saving