For unto us a child is born

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the greatness of his government and peace

there will be no end.

He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom,

establishing and upholding it

with justice and righteousness

from that time on and forever.

The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

Isaiah 9:6-7

A RACK kind of morning

We spent last Friday morning out on the town RACK'ing.  It was a load of fun.  We went to the Dollar Store to leave dollars for other kiddos to find, left nice notes on lots of windshields, attached quarters to vending machines and visited our local Fire Station with three dozen donuts.  Oh and I picked up a 25-count box of Munchkins for my RACK'ing munchkins ... they totally deserved it.  I purposely did not take my camera out so that I could be "in the moment" with the kids and not worry about documenting.  So when we got home, I shot this quick image to commemorate the morning's festivities having every intention of blogging about it in the afternoon.

And then I saw the news about Connecticut.  Writing a blog post didn't seem to matter anymore, so I put it on the back burner.  But after thinking about it today, I decided to go ahead and post it.  Because an event like that should stop me from posting about good things ... about acts of kindness meant to make our piece of the world a little bit better.  I have a hard time wrestling with what was going on in Newtown while we were carefree and RACK'ing our neighborhood.  But doing GOOD is what keeps evil at bay.  So we're gonna RACK on.  And I hope you will too.

'Tis the Season

Caught them watching the sugar cookies bake ... all at once ... together.  Ah, adorable.  These were for Advent Day #6 - bake homemade cookies to give to neighbors we don't know well.  Got the cookies baked yesterday, and we will finally be getting these where they belong later tonight when everyone is home from work.  Seems many of our Advent projects are running into multiple days, but we are loving all the projects!

Advent Day 2: A Giveaway!!

Today we read "The King's Christmas List" by Eldon Johnson, and then visited their website.  We gifted a share of a new water well, 2 chickens and 2 ducks to other less fortunate families around the world.  The kids had a hard time deciding how to spend the money but really gave it a lot of thought.  I liked this activity because it forced them to think about families in other parts of the world that live very different lives ... a concept that I know must be quite difficult for them.

The book itself is really sweet with pretty illustrations.  Without giving away the whole story, it's about a girl who learns that helping people in need is the best way to give gifts to the King on His birthday.  It teaches young children the true meaning of Christmas in a way that makes sense and is easy to understand.

It would be a perfect addition to your Christmas book collection and I'm GIVING AWAY one free copy on the blog!  There are a few ways to enter the giveaway:

1. Share this post on Facebook or your favorite social networking site and then comment here letting me know.
2. For an extra entry, visit "The King's Adventure" website with your kids (you don't need to purchase anything, although that would be wonderful!) and then comment here letting me know.
3. And for another extra entry, "like" the Living Out His Love's Facebook page to stay updated on the rest of our Advent activities and then leave a comment letting me know you did (or comment letting me know if you are already a "liker").

You will need to comment for each entry.  Please make sure that I can get in touch with you by leaving an email address!  Tell your family and friends, spread the word!  The winner will be drawn on Monday, December 10, 2012 in the evening!  Merry Christmas!

Advent Day 1: Prayer Sticks

I love how this project turned out!  In case you don't know what we're doing for Advent this year, click HERE to read about our Random Acts of Christmas Kindness Advent projects!  Our first day's project was to create Prayer Sticks  -  we now have a collection of popsicle sticks with pictures of family & friends glued on them to help us pray in the evenings before bed.  And we'll definitely be adding more in the future!

The kids had fun putting this project together.  I painted a wooden cylinder box from A.C. Moore to hold our Prayer Sticks and mod-podged the image on the front (that I found online).  This is a new tool we will use every night.  Praying for others is definitely an act of kindness that will reap rewards indefinitely, and we are so excited to have a fun way to incorporate it into bedtime prayers!

How we're doing Advent this year

We are on a never-ending journey to make Christmas more meaningful for our kids.  And no, I don't mean by purchasing more gifts ... I mean by buying less and helping them truly understand Jesus' love and why we celebrate Christmas.  It is not about Santa, and Rudolph, and Christmas trees, and watching our favorite Christmas movies, and buying a bunch of gifts for people.  Although those are fun secular things too, they are not what we are celebrating.  We made the mistake early on of getting too caught up in the extra bells and whistles of Christmas, and now we are slowly re-teaching our kids
(and ourselves).  It's about getting caught up in consumerism less, and instead giving more of ourselves and our time.

I can't think of a better way to teach our children about the gift of Christmas and to truly honor Jesus on his birthday, than by serving others.  The way Jesus would, on a level that the kids can understand.  I have created an ever-growing Pinterest board of ways to serve others, and I adore all of the creative ideas.  Teaching children to have a heart like Jesus and to serve is such a beautiful thing, and we want to start passing that onto our children during Christmas.  So this year for Advent, although we are still doing lots of fun Christmas crafting, we are excited to be "RACK-ing" people ... doing a Random Act of Christmas Kindness per day, up to Christmas.  The kids are totally on board and keep asking when December 1st is coming :-)  So very sweet!

Although we may have to alter the order of our days, here is a basic rundown, beginning on December 1st:

1. Create Prayer Sticks for our family and friends to help us remember to pray for everyone.
2. Read "The King's Christmas List" and then pick out several gifts from their website to send to people around the world.
3. Handwrite letters and draw pictures to mail to others.
4. Paint rocks and then leave them wherever we go throughout Advent.
5. Write happy notes and then leave them on car windshields in a parking lot.
6. Make homemade cookies to give to neighbors we don't know well.
7. Handmade gifting!  We will be making handmade gifts all day!
8. Find a homeless person to give a meal to.
9. Leave a big tip when we're out to lunch after church with a nice note.
10. Tape quarters to a few vending machines.
11. Leave a sweet treat and a note for the trash men in the morning.
12. Go caroling with our MOPS group.
13. Take doughnuts to the local Fire Station to thank them for their service.
14. Hide dollar bills in the toy section of the Dollar Store.
15. Make and colors cards, and then visit an Assisted Living facility to pass them out to people who need a little pick-me-up.
16. Pick toys out of our rooms to donate to others.
17. Take dinner to a new adoptive family.
18. Pay for someone else's toll on the highway.
19. Leave a sweet treat and a note for the postal workers at our local post office who we see a lot!
20. Take lunch to someone at work.
21. Pass out Sillybandz to any children we happen to see (we are planning on doing this on a special trip out somewhere, but I am not sure of the date yet)
22. We are hoping to visit a hospital to donate arts and crafts supplies to the children's areas (I am still waiting on confirmation from the hospital).
23. Tape quarters to a laundry machine at the local laundromat.
24. Leave a sweet treat for our mailman, who so diligently delivers our mail (even during a hurricane!).

Ok, that's our list!  I will be doing some posts for these throughout December (especially of the ones we're doing at home), but I want to be as present as possible and am going to try to not take my camera with me on outings.  We'll see how that goes :-)  I'd love to hear more ideas for serving with your kids from other readers, especially if you have done something that seemed to really impact your kids!  It will be great to tuck those little nuggets away for future use :-)

Happy Advent everyone!  Here is the note we will be using during Advent - I created it using inspiration that came from several other blogs that have done something similar in the past.

(Come find me on Facebook!  And if you have been blessed by my blog, would you mind taking just a few seconds of your time and click on the 2 links below?  You don't need to do anything except click each button once (you can click once a day!).  Each click is a "vote" that allows my blog to be seen by other homeschool and adoptive families so I can help them too!  Thank you so much for blessing me with your help, may God bless your day!)

DIY Advent Calendar

I'm really tickled with how our Advent Calendar turned out this year.  I got my inspiration from (surprise, surprise) pinterest and then tried to use what I had around the house to put it together.  The black frame was a $2 yard sale find over the summer, I already had the wired ribbon in our Christmas decorations and I had almost all of the Christmas scrapbook paper needed to put this together.  I love DIY projects that can be made with stuff I already have!

I did purchase the little paper mache boxes - they were $2.99 for six in a pack.  I also purchased the glittery numbers in the scrapbook section of A.C. Moore - they are chipboard stickers and were the most expensive investment in this project.  So to put this together, I did the following:

1. I painted all of the paper mache boxes with a neutral beige (I have quite the collection of acrylics, so no cost on the paint.)
2. After picking out 24 Christmas-colored scrapbook papers to use, Angel and I traced and cut out the papers to fit the tops of the paper mache boxes.  (I only bought a few new papers from Oriental Trading - I guess something good is coming out of my scrapbooking days.)
3. I then mod-podged the papers onto the tops of the boxes - one coat on the bottom and one on the top.
4. I picked 2 more scrapbook papers that were the same, without any crazy design, to use as the background of the calendar.  I just put that under the glass and then put the frame back together.
5. After that, I positioned all of the little boxes on top of the glass the way I wanted them, and then hot glued then into place.  I ADORE hot glue, there's nothing like the smell of melted glue!
6. Then, I stuck all of the glittery numbers onto the tops of the paper mache boxes.
7. After that, I hot-glued and stapled a ribbon to the back of the frame for hanging.  I tied a bow with a separate piece of ribbon and hot-glued that onto the top of the ribbon for decoration.

Voila!  Ready for hanging!  Now the boxes just need to be filled.  The only variation I considered was using some kind of magnetic background and adding magnets to the backs of the boxes.  But I ultimately didn't do that because of the added expense and because this was easier :-)

I have another post coming up soon to explain how we are going to use this Advent Calendar and what we're doing for all of Advent.  It's totally new for us and I am so stinking excited about it.  Can't wait to share and I'd love to have some of you join me!

Our Black Friday tradition

Or well, it's sort of a Thanksgiving weekend tradition ... we put up the Christmas tree and do all of the decorating.  No crazy shopping for us, it's just not our scene.  We have had a nice, relaxing day of decorating and Christmas music though ... oh and warmth from the fireplace.  A perfect day as far as I'm concerned, and I am pretty sure the kids agree.

Operation Christmas Child - SUCCESS!

And it was a success in more ways than one!

This week is National Collection Week with more than 3,400 drop-off sites available!  The kids and I had a lot of fun shopping for 3 shoeboxes this year, one for each of the kids.  They each helped pack a box for a girl (or boy in Lovebug's case) in their age range.  We picked up lots of little goodies and Angel even brought $11.65 of her own money to contribute.

That was all of her savings.  She gave it all.

Their hearts constantly amaze me and help put life in perspective!  Angel drew pictures for each of the boxes too and was so happy to know they'd be received by kids around the world.  I absolutely adore that they are getting old enough to understand what giving means.  They seem to have a natural compassion and kindness for others that I hope we can continue to foster.  Loving and serving in the name of Christ ... I can't think of better values to teach my precious littles.

If you haven't put any shoeboxes together, but would like to participate in Operation Christmas Child, there's still time!  Shoeboxes need to be dropped off by this coming Sunday, November 18th.  And if that's not possible for you, you could  build a box online with the OCC website!  It's easy peasy and will give the gift of Jesus to a child this Christmas!  Check out all the details on their website and don't forget that you can follow your box to see where it goes!

Photo credit - Samaritan's Purse

"And the King will answer them, 'Truly I say to you,

as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,

you did it to me.'"  Matthew 25:40

Post-Christmas Thoughts

Now that all of the craziness of Christmas has slowed down, I've started to reflect a bit. Ok a lot. LOL. And I can admit that I am guilty of getting wrapped up in the consumerism of Christmas. I wish I could say that our Christmas celebration has always been about Jesus. I would be embarrassed now to even share pictures of a few of our early Christmases with kids. Even now, I have trouble suggesting ideas for our relatives about what to gift the kids because they. have. every. thing. EVERYTHING. Slowly though, over the last several years, DH and I have both come to realize how over-the-top it all is. Actually, I think it's fair to say that DH always thought I went overboard, so maybe I had to catch up to him first in my thinking ... and we are both now realizing that the smaller-scaled gifting version of what we do is still probably too much.

I don't want my kids growing up thinking that's what Christmas is ... just a day when they get to unwrap mounds of gifts that they may or may not play with. And frankly, I don't want to celebrate Christmas like that. It's expensive and stressful! I mean, the WHOLE POINT of Christmas is to celebrate our Savior's birth and what He sacrificed for us. We have added some traditions into our Christmas celebration to bring Jesus to the forefront ... we talk about Jesus' birthday quite a bit and do a few other things. But let's face it, the kids are still mostly excited about those gifts on Christmas morning. Regardless of whether they come from us, another family member, or that one gift from Santa ... that's the main excitement for them.

So how do I change that? For my kids? For my family? At least for the gift-giving part, we are going to implement The Story of 3 Gifts next year for the kids ... adopted (stolen) from my dear friend Kelly. For the first time this year, I read her post about how they "do" Christmas and I thought to myself, THAT is what we should be doing. Making the gifts *mean* something to the kids. Making them *think* about what Jesus did for us. I loved it and shared it with DH, and he loved it too. He even shared it with someone else after that. And now I'm sharing it with you. I'm excited about this change and am looking forward to working on a few other changes as well.

Watching the Advent Conspiracy video really opened my eyes as well. If you haven't viewed it yet, I encourage you to do so. I don't want to write anything about it because I think the video will do the talking. Maybe it will affect you in the way it did me and DH. We watched a version of it at church too and changed a (small) portion of our gift-giving this year to reflect what we saw.

This video got me to start thinking. My life is full of choices. I make small decisions every second of the day ... whether to get that cup of Starbucks (guilty!!), whether to buy the extra toy for my kids (guilty!!) ... or whether to buy that one extra thing on Amazon because it was free shipping (GUILTY!!!). Truly, I do not *need* most of the things I buy. I am so guilty of buying extra junk that I don't need. What if I stopped buying just a small portion of those non-essentials and put that money toward something GOOD? Wouldn't THAT be a true birthday gift for Jesus?

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Matthew 6: 19-21

A new tradition & Cinnamon Gingerbread Ornaments

We started a new tradition this year of a "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree for the kids' homemade (or school/church-made) ornaments this year. It's on the small side and I think we'll have to replace it soon, but I love this idea of the kids having their own Christmas tree with their own ornaments. Isn't it cute? I put it in the basement where they would see it a lot while playing (and honestly, I was out of space on the first floor! LOL). I love their precious handmade crafts ... all of the hard work and love that goes into them ... oh they just brighten my day. But ... our tree is overwhelmed with "regular" ornaments ... all of the little pieces we have picked up through the years - the ornaments that remind us of our family memories - new milestones, vacations, special places, etc. So this was a great idea for us - a way for ALL of our special memories to be displayed!

Oh and I can now post about one of the fun crafts that we did this year - Cinnamon Gingerbread Ornaments! Oh boy do these smell delicious! I admit, they were a little messy and mildly labor intensive, but I think the results were worth it for our olfactory systems :-)

So here's the recipe/directions if you're interested:

Cinnamon Gingerbread Ornaments

3/4 cup cinnamon

1 tbsp allspice

2 tbsp cloves

1 tbsp nutmeg

1 cup applesauce

Combine first 4 ingredients and blend well. Stir in applesauce and mix well. Roll out 1/4 inch thick on ungreased cookie sheet (err to the thicker side - thinner ornaments break more easily). Cut with cookie cutters of different shapes. Put a tiny hole in top with a toothpick (I used a straw to make a bigger hole). Let dry 4 days (I put them on cooling racks - only took about 2-3 days). Put a string through hole and hang on Christmas tree. Can also make hearts for all year home ornaments. Smells wonderful.

Source: http://www.cooks.com

These are so amazingly scrumptious smelling ... but be careful with them, as they are extremely breakable.

Christmas Day Bliss

MERRY CHRISTMAS from our family to yours! I hope you had a wonderful day! Our morning started bright and early at about 7am ... we told Angel she wasn't allowed to get up before then :-) LOL. The kids each got one gift from Santa - Angel asked for makeup (ugh), Lovebug asked for a "big choo-choo" and we got to decide for Sunshine this year :-) They had so much fun opening their gifts and Sunshine just dug right in and was happy to open anyone else's gift that would let her. She loved unwrapping!

It was a really wonderful morning that included my family, gift-giving and gift-receiving, lots of coffee, and scrumptious brunch food. Of course, we were all most delighted to watch the kids open their gifts - oh they had so much fun! It's so easy to remember what it was like as a kid on Christmas morning, and it's truly amazing to see it through their eyes as a parent.

Unfortunately these are the only pictures I have. Like I have said before, I'm more into experiencing than documenting when it comes to family events and celebrations like this. I'm thankful that DH shot the few that he did of the kids opening Santa's gifts (loved his long-legged knee in the bottom right of all the shots! LOL), because the only other ones that I shot were of Lovebug checking out the gift we were ALL excited to give him ... it came from Nana & Granddad (my parents) ... le piece de resistance ... a human-powered Go Kart. Ummmm, yeah he pretty much loved it. LOL. And we all loved seeing his face even more.

Traditionally, Lovebug has been very scared of any moving toys that make noise. He's been scared of them since he was very young. DH picked up a power wheels go cart for him a couple years ago, but Lovebug refused to ride it because he was so deathly scared of it. We have almost no toy trucks or cars in our house that make noise, although he is *slowly* coming around to the coolness factor of a lot of them. I mean, you have to outgrow a fear like that eventually, right?! So anyway, when my Dad saw a pedal Go Kart, he knew it was the perfect stepping stone for Lovebug to a real Go Kart (did I mention that we have decided Lovebug is going to be the next Jimmie Johnson? ... or Jeff Gordon if you ask my Dad ... or Kyle Busch if you ask DH. LOL.)

So in summary, it was a fantastic, absolutely terrific, wonderful, amazing, perfect day. Lots of family time and the kids? Well, they had so. much. fun. Now if we can just decide how to get more commercialism out of our Christmas celebration and more Jesus into it ... a post to come on that soon. Merry Christmas to everyone and Happy Birthday to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Christmas Eve with the Brooks Clan

I just love our Christmas Eve tradition ... we've been doing it for as long as I can remember ... dinner and church (in different orders depending on the year). I am thrilled we decided not to cancel this year, it's always so much fun. Unfortunately we didn't do church this year because of Lovebug's eyes (you can't tell in these b&w shots, but his eyes were bloodshot), and we were concerned he might pass it onto another child.

I don't see my brothers nearly as much as I'd like, but I sure do love them. There's always a connection ... and we always have so much fun together. And the kids love them ... well I can't say that for Sunshine quite yet, but she *will* love them, she just doesn't know it yet :-)

I whipped out the camera after Sunshine was in bed for a quick shot of me with my brothers. And then the kids were just being so cute with brother #1 and Nana ... well I couldn't help but snap a few of them too. Unfortunately Sunshine was already in bed :-(

And sadly, that's all I have from Christmas Eve ... I am terrible at capturing events. I much rather enjoy experiencing them, so I rarely do a good job documenting parties and family gatherings. Dad & DH, I am so sorry you aren't in any of these!

Time capsule ornaments

I cannot take credit for this idea, but I loved it so much, I just had to do it myself and share it here on the blog! I picked up clear glass ornaments (the fillable kind) from A.C. Moore on sale last week and had so much fun with these! I wrote all 3 kids' names on the ornaments with a paint pen, along with the year.

Angel really got into this craft and helped me fill all of them with glitter and a few toys. We picked items that represented each child individually - Angel picked a few small girly toys for hers, we picked some crayons and moon dough for Lovebug, and Sunshine got a small hair clip because she loves having her hair "done" right now.

I then cut a small piece of scrapbooking paper for each ornament so that we could list all of the kids' favorite things right now. The family that originally gave me this idea lists all of the big milestones of the year instead ... I bet there's tons of ways to do this fun part! Angel wrote her own, which is so exciting to me because I know it will be so fun to look back at her handwriting in the years to come. Once we were satisfied with our lists, we rolled up the papers and stuck them inside the ornaments also.

Lastly, I printed a recent picture of each kiddo on regular old copy paper (I know, very hypocritical of me but I needed them to bend so they would roll up and fit in the ornament). Once we placed them in each ornament, they were complete and ready for tree hanging!

I am thrilled with how these crafty time capsule ornaments turned out :-) It will be such a fun tradition to create these every year as the kids grow older, and look back on them as well to watch them change through the years. This one is definitely a keeper! I'd love to hear about all of the awesome traditions that you share with your family too, especially the handmade ones! What fun memories to make for our whole family :-)

In other off-topic news, our house has had a rough couple days (or weeks if you count all of the other sicknesses too). Sunshine has bronchitis, Angel has a bad stomach virus and I am sick with a yucky cold (or something) again for the 3rd time in 6 weeks. DH may be starting to show signs of the stomach thing as well ... it is a very nasty virus that has left Angel completely incapacitated all day today and unable to keep anything down. Lovebug is the only one that is semi-healthy, and even he has a bit of a cough. Poor Sunshine has been sick and/or recovering from surgery for a month and a half. Apparently being under general anesthesia makes you more prone to pneumonia ... thank God it's only bronchitis so far, her lungs are clear! I feel like we just keep passing everything back and forth to each other ... I am almost starting to worry if sleep deprivation is contagious as well, because we all seem to be suffering from it. Honestly, it's quite laughable at how sick we all are! Hopefully we can wipe all of this yuckiness out over the next few days before Christmas. Fortunately we are ready for the weekend's festivities, so the only thing we need to worry about is getting well!

Truth in the Tinsel

We've been having a blast with the Truth in the Tinsel advent activities! Unfortunately I didn't find out about them until halfway into December, but we are doing a shortened 12-day version and it's great! Angel is totally into doing the crafts and I love that she's really learning and *getting* the Christmas story. Yesterday we learned about the Angel Gabriel and his visit to Mary ... and then we made this adorable little jingle bell angel that now hangs on the kids' handmade ornament tree.

Head on over to Impress Your Kids and check out all of Amanda's great ideas about how to "impress your kids" with God's word! I really love her website and the ideas are easy peasy!

The Christmas Story

I love this ... seriously, so precious!

Christmas crafting

We have been busy crafting away over the last few days! First up was the Gingerbread House - the last time we did one, Lovebug was a baby! The kids had a lot of fun doing this - we tried to give them as little assistance as possible so it could really be a project that THEY did.

I love this tender shot of Sunshine and DH together. We started her off in the high chair with some cheerios so that the older kids could get started on decorating. Funny thing is that DH was actually wiping her face and she was really not that happy with him, but I happened to catch a .000005 second frame when she was lovingly looking at him :-) Ah the joys of a DSLR and low f-stop.

She much preferred to be in on the action versus sitting in the high chair though - she liked getting the icing on her hands but then wanted it off as quickly as possible. She dug right in and loved being able to decorate too!

How bad is it that we put the camera down to finish up and forgot to take a final snapshot of the finished Gingerbread House? I guess we were too caught up in the fun :-) This project smells delightful sitting on the counter now and I'm hopeful that we can keep it it and pull it out every year!

I am determined to do more crafting this year! We got so caught up in life last year that I didn't even get the Christmas lights up outside. I promised myself this year would be different and we've done great! I can't wait to share some of the other projects we've been working on ... but I think some of my readers may become recipients of said projects, so I think it best to wait until after Christmas to post :-)