Happy New Year!

Happy New Years everyone! May God bless you in this new year!

God bless!

He Cracks himself up

Under a Christmas tree, is the very best place to be!

Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to wish all my lovely blog readers a most lovely Christmas Eve/Christmas Day! I hope all of you have a blessed rest of this joyous weekend and may you stay warm! Please don't forget that Christmas isn't about Gifts, Cookies and Friends. (Those things are very nice this time of year though ;) ) Its about Jesus, his death and his birth! Have a wonderful Christmas!

Gott segne und frohe Weihnachten!

That night was anything but silent.

The Christmas song "Silent Night" is a beautiful song. Lots of people enjoy it, and its probably some people's favourite Christmas song. I like it also. Here's the lyrics :

Silent night, holy night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon Virgin Mother and Child

Holy Infant so tender and mild

Sleep in heavenly peace

Sleep in heavenly peace

Silent night, holy night!

Shepherds quake at the sight

Glories stream from heaven afar

Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!

Christ, the Saviour is born

Christ, the Saviour is born

Silent night, holy night

Son of God, love's pure light

Radiant beams from Thy holy face

With the dawn of redeeming grace

Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth

Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth "

But if you think about it, that night was anything BUT silent. Now here are the lyrics for:

"That night was anything but Silent" Tell me what you think.

The heavens rang, the angels sing echoing the glad refrain.

That night was anything but silent.

Songs of hope, were everywhere.

Joyous praise filled the air, that night was anything but silent.

That night was anything but silent.

A multitude of angels sang his holy name,

he is the promised one, messiah, king of kings they all proclaimed.

That night was anything but silent.

The angels came that night to say a king of kings is born today.

That night was anything but silent.

Shepard's came to see the sight, I'm sure it was a holy night.

That night was anything but silent.

That night was anything but silent...

A multitude of angels sang his holy name,

he is the promised one, messiah, king of kings they all proclaimed.

That night was anything but silent.

That hill became a holy place where angels trod.

The Shepard's left their sheep to find the lamb of god.

The lamb of god!

That night was anything but silent!

I really like "Silent Night" its a beautiful song. And it will probably be a favourite by thousands of peoples for decades. But my favourite is "That night was anything but silent". It wasn't a silent night, it was a loud glorious night.

Gott segne und frohe Weihnachten!

O' Come O' Come Emmanuel

I have many favourite Christmas songs. And many I dislike, and some I don't mind. I liked the sound of O' come O' come Emmanuel, and I liked singing it. But for a while, I never got the meaning of it. Mom and I were talking one day, and after thinking about it. Christmas really isn't about Jesus's birth. It is about his death. Because Jesus was born to die for us.

"O come, O come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, O Israel.

Christmas is a fun holiday to celebrate, and giving and receiving gifts is a lot of fun. But sometimes we forget what Christmas is really about. I know I do. And I have to remind myself, it isn't about gifts and baking and our enjoyment. Jesus died for us. He suffered and forgave our sins

O come, O come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free

Thine own from Satan's tyranny

From depths of Hell Thy people save

And give them victory o'er the grave

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer

Our spirits by Thine advent here

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night

And death's dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,

And open wide our heavenly home;

Make safe the way that leads on high,

And close the path to misery.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,

Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height,

In ancient times did'st give the Law,

In cloud, and majesty and awe.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Gott segne und frohe Weihnachten!

Lunar Eclipse and Chocolate. (Lovely title, Eh?)

Two of my loverly friends have posted about the Lunar Eclipse. You can read their post's here and here. I might as well blog about it also. I had a friend sleep over last night. (We had a blast by the way, we're writing a play <3 We watched a movie and had some eggnog, then went to bed. Mom asked us before we went to bed, if we wanted her to wake us up for the Lunar eclipse. Of course! ( We went to bed around 11:00pm) Abi and Rachel ( My younger sister's) were going to sleep on their beds, and their beds are close to the floor, so they could still talk with K (The friend) But my bed is the top bunk, so I couldn't talk and have fun! So we decided to pull out the queen blow up mattress. Now, the funny thing about the blow up mattress is, we didn't get to blow it up all the way, because the pump decided to run out of battery in the middle of blowing it up! So I laid on the half blown up bed, and immediately sank to the floor, ( I could feel the floor on my back) Then K got on, and I was lifted up off the ground, but K was laying on the ground. So after much pushing, rolling and shoving, we lay perfectly still on our backs, and we were both lifted off the floor. The trick was to distribute our weight evenly. That was lots of fun. The idea of staying up all night popped into someone's head ( As it usually does at a sleep over) but I kindly disagreed with that idea. Then the idea popped up to stay up until the eclipse. But at 11:30pm we all were half asleep, and could hardly keep our eyes open. At 1:00 am mom came and got us up. Abi had a hard time getting out of bed, she walked outside, looked at the moon, mumble something and then went back to bed. **laughs** K and I grabbed a blanket just in case it was freezing. It wasn't THAT bad outside, but it was still pretty cold, so we lay on the cold ground freezing and watching the moon. It was fascinating. We watched all of it. After staying out in the backyard for almost an hour, we were freezing and we couldn't feel our toes. ( Being the smart kids we are, we didn't bring shoes or socks out) The last December 21st total Lunar eclipse was in 1638. The next winter solstice eclipse is due in 2094. I shall be gone by then. Now all I want to see is Halley's Comet. That would be awesome seeing it... It arrive in the mid 2061. :-/

Now for the chocolate part of the post. You know, I really am NOT trying to be mean or rude to my readers, but I just can't help sharing yummy mouth watering pictures for the month of December. We do a ton of yummy baking! Hm! Tonight we have a cookie exchange, we were suppose to bring 6 dozen cookies/candies. Ehhh. I said to mom "Please, not mint twists!" Usually when we go to a cookie exchange, we bring mint twist's, but I've made so much this year, I wanted to make something different. So we came up with something else :) We made Lemon cookies dipped in dark chocolate. They are SO very good! We've never made them before, but I will definitely be making them again! And they're pretty easy to make.. Anyway. Here is a picture of them! They turned out super good!

10,000 Miles

Fare thee well
My own true love
Farewell for a while
I’m going away
But I’ll be back
Though I go 10,000 miles

10,000 miles
My own true love
10,000 miles or more
The rocks may melt
And the seas may burn
If I should not return

Oh don’t you see
That lonesome dove
Sitting on an ivy tree
She’s weeping for
Her own true love
As I shall weep for mine

Oh come ye back
My own true love
And stay a while with me
If I had a friend
All on this earth
You’ve been a friend to me

A post for Emma.

If I remember correctly Emma, I told you a little bit about Cheezer in one of my letter's to you. I think I said, once you got the letter, I'd blog about Cheezer, and show you a picture of him! Well, here is Cheezer. (I actually have 3 Cheezer's.... But the one below is the favourite in my family)

(He's waving)
(He thinks he's shy, but he's really not)
(He's getting comfortable)
And that's Cheezer. He likes getting pictures taken of himself ;)

Gott segne und frohe Weihnachten!

One spoiled cat

Candy making day.

In one of my recent posts, I told a little about candy making day, well here is the "continuing post" Now, I'm not trying to make your mouth water or make you hungry, so please forgive me if I do succeed in doing that. Every year around this time my family has a annual "Candy making day" We go over to my Nana's house ( She lives right across the street from us) and make candy all day long. For the past few years we've started making up some of our candy, and just bringing it with us, as the kitchen isn't big enough for everything we bake! (Though my Nana's kitchen is pretty big!) We had candy making day today, we made candy all day long. We stopped around noon to have a sandwich and then continued baking cookies! Towards the end of the afternoon the baking slows, and we all take time to box up the candy we want, and taste test. (Everyone's favourite part!) Below are a few pictures I took. Sorry they aren't very good, I wasn't trying to make them good, I was just flashing them quickly, as I was in everyone's way with my camera!

Zee vonderful Chocolate Peanut Clusters

Spiced pecans. (I could eat a million of those!)
Hello Dollies. (I wonder why they are called that...)
Toffee! My second favourite! *diez*
Peppermint bark. Yummy!
Chocolate pretzel thingys...
More chocolate pretzel thingys..
Chocolate caramel pecan pretzel thingy's.
White chocolate pretzels! <3

Annnnd My all time favourite! Pecan chew! <3

This is pretty hard to make, usually it turns out too hard!

Deeeeeeluuuucious!

Well! Is your mouth watering yet? Looking over the pictures, I realized I forgot fudge! Oh well. You'll just have to imagine what it looks like. I hope this isn't torture reading this post... I sure had my full share of candy today :)

Gott segne und frohe Weihnachten!

A post for Katie.

Photography~

Here are some random pictures I took the other day. Please comment and tell me what you think! My camera wasn't focusing well when I took these pictures, so please tell me if they're blurry! Thank you very much! I appreciate it lots!

"Winter"

"Just a little bit of colour"
"Standing on the edge"
"Sliding"
"Freezing"
Now these.. THESE! These are special pictures.

THESE are the Christmas lights on our Christmas tree.

Zee secret to this is fireworks. I thought they turned out

absolutely wonderful! <3
"Flashing Flight"
And there you have it. I haven't been very good at posting on this poor blog, I just don't have time to sit down and write and write. Especially the month of December. My next post will probably be on Thursday or Friday, I'll have some special pictures then!

Gott segne und frohe Weihnachten!

Music, Boots and Christmas.

I would say the title says it all, but it really doesn't... And besides, you're probably wondering what I meant in the title. I'll start with Family. Even though it is not on the "list". Micah is handing me receipts from my mom's purse, he like's giving things away, but then he wants them back. Anyway... (*cough* he's so cute) Mom, Dad, Joshua and I all spent most of the afternoon playing cards. My grandparents from Michigan taught us a new game called golf. It has nine rounds, so it get's pretty long sometimes. Joshua was being very, errr.. Sarcastic, maybe? But he was making us all laugh. Then Mom and Dad taught Joshua and I a new game, but I forgot what it was called. Its lots of fun though, little confusing. Heh. But thats what we did this afternoon. We had Christmas music playing and a fire crackling in the background. (But I'm warm now).

Now for the Boots part..... I really don't have to blog about this, but decided I would. I got boots yesterday, but I think most of my reader knew that. I like boots.

On my graphics page I put up some new graphics, seasonal, (I'm not done putting up seasonal one's) They'll mostly be the same size. Sooner or later I'll have "pages" of the different sizes, but that is taking a little while to figure out. Usually I can't just sit down at the computer and design, I wish I could, but I can't. Usually when I sit down someone needs me, or the most adorable little face comes and looks at me with a pitiful looks, and he holds out tiny chubby little hands. Oh yeah, I'd much rather have him, then have all the time in the world to design blog stuff. Doodad.

Ah yes. Christmas. I have almost all my Christmas shopping done. Almost all of it. I just need one/two more things, for my mom. Shhhh. In my family, since there is seven of us kids, we draw names, instead of getting gifts for EVERYONE in my family. Though I do usually get something for my mom and dad. This year I got Abi, again. (I got her last year, and the year before). We were going to keep the names we drew a secret, but somehow they always leaked out. So this year we just decided to tell, and not keep a secret. Its easier that way!

Some of my lovely friends gave me some new book suggestions, I've been enjoying some of their suggestion's. Lets see.. There was "Redwall" by Brian Jacques (There is like 22 books in that entire series!) but I'm liking "Castaway's of the Flying Dutchman" better. (By Brian Jacques also) I like reading new books, but its always fun rereading the one's I own and have read before. One book I love reading over and over is "The Princess Bride" by S. Morgenstern a classic tale of "True Love" and high adventure. *Dizzy* I absolutely love that book. The movie isn't all that bad either, but I enjoy the book so much more. Sheesh. Its making me want to read it again, I'll have to reserve it from the library. I would very much recommend it.

This has been a very long random post. Oh, to add another random thing.. Remember the cat Mittens I blogged about? Well she's doing much better. She's eating a lot, and drinking a lot of water, she is now hydrated! (Hurrah!) She's gained half a pound in two days! She laid in the sun all day today, Rachel has been constantly warming a heating pad thingy, and laying the cat on it. The cat adore's it. Rachel is definitely going to be the cats favourite. But Rachel loves cats like crazy, so its not a surprise that she's been toting the cat around and laying in the sun with it. Hehe.

Well. Thats about it. Hopefully you can bear my long rambling post's. "Tis the season for being busy" or "Tis the season for making tons of Candy" December 16th is National chocolate day/candy making day (For my family!) I must be off to a Christmas party now..

Frohe Weihnachten!

The Beauty of Winter

Underneath the moonlite clouds
are jewels silver-white.
dancing across the meadow
snowflakes fill the night.

Not a sound is heard
to disturb this work of art.
Watching from a distance
A deer pauses in the dark.

The pinetrees are glistening
snow drifts upon the ground.
The moons reflection dances
upon each snowflake found.

Standing outside you observe
this winter wonderland.
Snowflakes kiss your nose
and dance upon your hand.

You begin to look around
You stand gazing up above
as the beauty of winter
embraces you with love.

God Bless,

Mittens.

Today my mom and I were driving home from picking up somethings. We drove into the neighborhood, and a moment later I saw something black in the middle of the road. As we came closer I saw it was a cat. We got pretty close to it, and it wasn't moving. It just sat there. So mom told me to get out a see if I could move it, or if when I got out it got scared and ran. It didn't get scared, it just sat there. So I was going to pick it up and move it to the side of the road. I touched its back and felt its back bone. She was/is very skinny. I guess I looked at mom with a funny face, because she rolled down her window. I said it was very skinny, mom motioned for me to pick her up and bring her in the car. The cat kept mowing very pitifully. When we got home we grabbed some old towels and brought her into the living room. Mom held her and exclaimed about how skinny she was. We've named her Mittens, like from Bolt. She is a de-clawed cat also. We've only had her twenty minutes or so.. But I couldn't wait to post this. She is very VERY skinny, and probably a little dehydrated, but we're feeding her and right now Rachel has her in her lap. (Below is a picture of her) She has an appointment with the vet tomorrow. Who knows.. We may keep her. Rachel is more than happy right now, she loves cats. Anyway.. I just couldn't wait to post about her!

God bless!

"False alarm! As in, Never-mind!"

Wow. I'm actually, blogging. I haven't made a real post in quite some time. And believe me, this shall be a real post. Horribly long. I was going to do a Christmas template.. But decided against it because I had worked so hard on my current template, and I really like it, and don't really want to mess it up. Heh. If you noticed, I put snowflakes on my blog. Hoping Oklahoma will get caught in a blizzard like last year for Christmas. That was fun. We could hardly cross the street it was so bad. I was sad that we couldn't have our Christmas party and my grandmothers (Across the street) because all my other relatives couldn't make it, it was too dangerous to drive in. Oh well.... I wish Oklahoma would get more snow. But then I'd probably be wishing for less snow if Oklahoma got more snow. So confusing. I'll stop rambling.

Now. I finished NaNoWriMo! With a total word count of : 51,658. **collapses** It was insanely fun, but tiring. I'm taking December off writing, I think. Then I'll continue to write in my NaNo novel until it is complete. And I have another novel idea that I"m thinking about, I have a pretty good plot for that.. So, maybe. If NaNo was closer, I might save my novel idea for NaNo next year, but since its a year away, I don't think I can make it. I'll just start writing in January. But thats about it, as far as writing.

Another subject now. This will be a long random post. Christmas. Today my family put our Christmas tree up. That was fun. Pretty much. I kind of dread putting the ornaments on, because everyone wants to put one up at the same exact time. And mom informed me this afternoon that next year I get the job of putting the lights on the tree from now on. Great. Hopefully I do it right, it seems pretty complicated, from my view.. My mom and I went out this afternoon and went Christmas/Grocery shopping. The grocery store was exhausting, there was so many people there! Thankfully we had already went Christmas shopping before Grocery shopping, or we would have never made it Christmas shopping. We came home and put the lights on the tree, then I talked my dad into taking me to Wal-Mart so I get get my little sister's (Abi) Christmas present. (The rest of it that is). We also picked up a box of extra lights, because my mom needed them. After mom put the lights up we put the homemade garland thingy's Rachel and I had made on it. (A picture at the end of the post) Then.... I got the loverly job of instructing everyone on HOW to decorate the tree. The Five and Three year old decided they just wanted to put all their ornaments on one part of the tree. I secretly spread them around, it was funny. Aaron only wanted to put up certain ornaments, he wouldn't put up the one's I gave him, just the one's he picked. Silly little guy. Anyway. That was part of my day, definitely not all of it, that's for certain. Oh, we also listened to Christmas music and drank eggnog. I love Christmas time. I have so many secrets, and I love celebrating the birth of our Lord and Saviour.

December 16th is the annual "Candy making day" for my family. Its lots of fun. We make all kinds of candy! We go over to my Nana's house in the morning, and two of my aunts come also. We stay pretty much all day. We make all kinds of candy, such as spiced pecans, toffee, fudge, covered pretzels, peanut clusters, pecan chew, you get the idea, I assume? Its very yummy!

Oh, I wanted to apologize about my graphics page. It doesn't have any graphics on it right now, but I am currently working on some winter/Christmas graphics! So.. I'm sorry about that, and the new graphics WILL be up soon!

I suppose this will have to do. It does look quite long enough. Oh. I wanted to ask you.... What are some of your favourite family traditions for Christmas? I can't wait to get some answers!

God bless you!

(The picture of the thingy's Rachel and I made)