Author: Joyce

This could have been an awful Christmas. Allan went overseas to help with earthquake relief. We both had talked about it and going was the right thing. He was gone over Christmas and New Years.

But, this was a good Christmas. Hard, but good. There were so many people who stepped in to encourage and help our family. Grandma Grace brought all the kids special toys, the neighbor and Opa kept our driveway shoveled. Mark did very well on Bible quizzing. We were able to talk to Allan on satellite phone. Mark requested the Grinch song for Daddy over the radio because he knew Allan was listening. Then the radio station talked with Allan about what he was doing. We spent Christmas day with family. The kids and I enjoyed the season doing a lot of baking and crafts and just being silly.

When Allan returned home, we celebrated Christmas and him being home.

The Christmas when Audrey was 2, her Sunday School teacher was the best.  Kristi believed that teaching Bible truths could be done at any age.  She taught the children the whole Christmas story: we are all sinners and need a savior.  That Jesus, fully God and fully man, came to earth as a baby so that he could pay the penalty for our wrong doing when he died on the cross.  Jesus did not stay dead, but rose again!  

But she also let the children play.  One evening, Audrey and her friends pretended to be Mary and played with their babies.  

For fun, I thought I would go through my old pictures and enjoy sharing a month of memories.  

Mark and Katie said they had snow at home, but Klaus did not play in it. While it snowed here earlier this month, we did not get much accumulation and decided it did not count. Klaus thinks snow is wonderful and is hoping to play in it again soon!

We had our first good snow last night.  We went sledding and then enjoyed our traditional “King of the Hill” fight.  Not sure who won today, though Megan says she was the last one standing when I said it was time to go.

Discovered this note to myself from Mark’s senior year in high school.

Our mornings are pretty predictable. Mark gets up, gets ready for the day and then works on the computer till 8:30 when he goes for his run.  While he is running, the other kids use the computer for math and a few other things.  When Mark gets back, he is usually upstairs by the time the others are done.

I went downstairs and noticed that his door was still closed when the rest of the kids were done.  I asked him what he was doing.  He replied “physics”.  Knowing he often works in his room, I asked what he was learning today.  He replied, “A body at rest tends to stay at rest”.  I laughed and told him to come upstairs, thus completing the rest of Newton’s first law of motion which states a body at rest tends to stay at rest until an external force acts upon it.

This morning, I asked Adrian to look for a certain blog post I wrote years ago.  I thought it would be fun to try to duplicate it.  After Adrian found the post, we had to laugh, because it was posted 10 years ago today.  

A Day in the Life…