Profoundly Thankful

I love looking through old pictures. It’s especially fun to find a really good one that you don’t remember ever seeing. This morning, I found this one of Trent taken two years ago, just past his second birthday.

There have been many moments since he was hospitalized that I’ve been particularly struck with thankfulness that he is still with us. Often, it happens during special occasions: his birthday, of course, watching him open his Christmas gifts, toasting the old and new years last night. And then, unexpectedly, this morning, when I came across this picture of him that I don’t remember ever seeing. I had two immediate reactions:

Awwwww … look how gorgeous he is, and

Wow … I’m so very thankful he’s still with us.

Thankful that I wasn’t looking at this picture of his little face in an “In Memoriam” kind of way … wondering what he might look like as a four-year-old.

To many, that might sound strange and maybe even a little macabre, but that is how my thought processes tend to go these days.

I know our older girls have a changed perspective, too. Not long after Trent came home, as Courtney was stepping over his toys, she suddenly said “I’m so glad we still have his little toddler messes!” More thankfulness. Were we ever thankful for his messes before last August?

Sometimes, it surprises and disappoints me that I can still have times of anger, frustration and discontent over things that are so minor compared to what we went through. It’s just more evidence of our fallen natures, of course. But thankfully, God gives us all these moments -- the big milestone events and the little things like the discovery of a photograph -- to remind of us His goodness and mercy. And we are profoundly thankful for all those moments … and for our healthy little boy.

 

  

Prying Pup

We’re planning to put together a photo album on New Year’s Eve with pictures we’ve taken throughout 2014. Kind of a “Year in Review” thing. So, I spent literally hours yesterday combing through all the pictures we’ve taken, picking out the ones that give a feel for what the year was like. I think I’ve got them all picked out and as of now, we have 268 pictures! Here’s a screen shot of a small portion of them

Notice the one of Samson in that screen shot? Here’s what it looks like:

 

Cracks me up!  I’m not sure who took this – I’d bet Courtney. It gives you a good insight into Samson’s personality. I doubt you could get a picture of Jack like this – he doesn’t slow down long enough. But Samson is the slower, more calm one. And he’s always right there. HAS to know what you’re doing at all times.  Ha!

Christmas 2014

 

With all the Nutcracker craziness and some extra work opportunities to take advantage of early in the month, much of our December activities were squeezed into the week before Christmas. I did the vast majority of my shopping from December 19 – 23 (I even bought one gift on Christmas Eve morning!!). I’ve never done my shopping that late, but that’s just the way things played out this year. In the end, I was just incredibly thankful we had the money to get the things we wanted for the kids (and more!), but more importantly, that we all stayed healthy this year!! Not even the sniffles on Christmas Eve and Day! What a blessing that was!

We did have our second annual Christmas Tea here at home, even though we couldn’t find time until December 23rd. Like last year, we moved our school room table into the piano room which was so much more cozy than the long dining room table.

  

Hmmmm … I don’t know why I don’t have a picture of Rachel from our tea. She was there. Oh wait – here she is …

 

Oh yeah, this is something else that happened in the days leading up to Christmas. We found out Rachel got accepted to Butler! Very exciting and we made a special trip down to Indy to snap this quick picture of her at the campus entrance. Our girl is “Butlerbound”!

So, back to the Christmas prep. The girls were asked to sing at our Christmas Eve service, so they had quite a few practice sessions, working on a special arrangement of “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus” and their parts. As usual, the others were a little distracted with pre-Christmas excitement, while Rachel had laser-like focus on getting the song just so. This is pretty typical. HA! 

Christmas Eve was spent driving down to Mom and Dad’s to greet the Virginia Ramseys (YAY!), the usual mad dash to the Noots for caroling (42 of us this year!), then back up to church for our wonderful Christmas Eve service, culminating in the traditional candlelit singing of “Silent Night.”

The girls wanted us to wake them up early, so they could open presents while it was still dark, but when I got up a little before 7, I could hear some noises (Sarah told me later she’d actually been awake since about 4:30! Ahhh … memories of my youth.  :-) ). By the time we got everything ready, it was just starting to get light (no need for a flash for the camera. Yesssss.).

We spent not only Christmas Eve and Day at Mom and Dad’s, but ended up driving down there the 2 days after Christmas, just to spend as much time as possible with the Ramseys before they headed back to Virginia today. We watched home movies, had an adults-only trip to BJs for dinner on Friday night, and basically spent a lot of time relaxing and eating.

And now, Christmas 2014 is behind us. During the season, there were moments of great beauty and wonder, times of joyful anticipation of celebrating that great moment in time when God came near to us in such an unusual and awesome way. Of course, not every moment was a “Kodak moment.” There were still times of everyday busyness (school, work, bills, chores, …), times of frustration and strife, disappointments and letting go of some expectations. As Christians, we work hard to keep a balance between honoring the birth of our Lord in a way that seems fitting while knowing that “in this world you will have trouble.” Thankfully, none of that changes the fact that Christ did come, and his birth marked the beginning of His work here on Earth on our behalf – a work which was perfect and sufficient in every way.

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” -- Luke 2:11

 

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The Nutcracker, Take 5

 

Five shows down, one to go! This afternoon, we finally got to see Courtney and Erica dance in IBC’s Nutcracker! They were cast as “Young Ladies” in the party scene, and they were very graceful and lovely Young Ladies. :-) The dresses they wore were provided by IBC and had been made from curtains! (when Mick heard this, he quoted Carol Burnette’s Scarlett O’Hara “I spotted it in the window and just couIdn’t resist it.” HA!) 

 

I had the girls get back into their costumes after the show and got a few pictures out in the lobby. They have spent an inordinate amount of time together in the past few weeks and still get along so well. How fun it is to watch your kids having fun together. :-)

 

  

The Joyful Anticipation of Advent

We’ve jumped into the Advent season full-swing, with tree-hunting, special meals and using the “good dishes.” This year, we’ve also added Nutcracker rehearsals and performances for Courtney and Erica.  The Lebanon Ballet had their Nutcracker performance back in May. I remember this time last year, saying to several people that I was so glad we went to a ballet school which always held their recitals in May rather than December, since December was busy enough. Now that Courtney and Erica are also taking classes at another school, we get to experience the busyness of the Nutcracker in December! (Why do I set myself up for things like this?!  :-D ) The first two performances were yesterday and there will be 4 (!) next weekend, then we will be done. Thankfully, we’ve been able to carpool with some friends and that has helped a LOT.

 

 Yes, Courtney is using an iPad for a mirror. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

As usual, we end up squeezing quite a bit into December – it will always be more busy, as it should be. The challenge is to approach this busyness with a spirit of joy and anticipation.  Nancy Wilson sums it up well in her post A Joyful Advent:

It’s easy to excuse a lot of fussing over the massive pile of gifts to buy and wrap, cookies to bake, cards to mail, trees to put up and decorate, and all the rest. But pause for a moment. Each day opens up looking forward to the appearance of the Child. Joyful anticipation should be building.

And it is.

Thanksgiving Thinking

 

Another Thanksgiving has come, giving us a day to focus on being thankful for the gifts God has blessed us with. In his sermon last week, Pastor Mark mentioned the 10 lepers who Jesus healed. The story reminds us that thankfulness is a rare thing, so it is good to have a special day set aside to think about His good gifts to us. Many of those gifts are intangible -- we know of them through His Word and can “see” through understanding His Word. But many of those gifts are also visible and physical -- we see their faces, feel their hugs and hear their laughter when we get together on that day. And like so many other Thanksgiving days before, this Thanksgiving was full of those good gifts – the abundance was everywhere, and it was palpable.

I’ve been writing this blog for about 6 years now and for each Thanksgiving I’ve written about (I’m sure I haven’t hit all of them), the main highlights, and even many of the details, remain the same. We went to Mom and Dad’s again. The house on Dix Road still easily holds us all, even though the kitchen is pretty tight. As always, the food was tasty and plentiful … very plentiful. One of the reasons I always appreciate a cold Thanksgiving is because we can use the screened-in back porch for the overflow. We had about 50 pounds of turkey, 10 pounds of mashed potatoes, the traditional and, in some cases untraditional, fixins. Mac’n Cheese, cranberries and homemade rolls, yes, but also Kelly made Jalapeno Poppers, which I’m told were muy caliente. I think Mick even shed a few tears over them. We had the traditional Pumpkin and Pecan pies and the decidedly untraditional “Crack Pie.” (Dad wondered if DEA agents would be staking out our house.) One of the Orr kids tried her hand at Cowboy Bark – which was devoured. The dish was sitting right in front of our watchful eyes on the dining room table and suddenly, it was just gone. Poof!

 

And like so many years before, this year was teeming with hordes of kids, some crawling around in their Pilgrim costumes, pretending to be horses, one crawling because she can’t walk yet, girls twirling around, boys running with their Nerf guns, teenagers gathering in the other living room and sharing their favorite YouTube songs and Studio C clips. Occasionally, we wonder: what did we used to do before we had all these kids? I’m sure we celebrated Thanksgiving and had lots of fun doing it. But there is such a richness in being surrounded by all the kids, watching them play and laughing with them (and often at them).

Many of us worked for much of the afternoon and evening on a puzzle. Only 500 pieces? Piece of cake. We’ll have that thing put together in no time. Of course, when much of the puzzle work is narrated with funny stories about crazy dreams (hint, hint), these things can get stretched out a bit. It was finished well after dark.

 

The guys played cards, again. We sang songs, sometimes spontaneously while washing dishes. (Yes, we wash dishes by hand. Mom got rid of their dishwasher decades ago: it took up too much cabinet space in their small kitchen and it never worked that well. So, there’s almost a continuous human dishwasher standing at the sink washing … plastic cups. Yes, we wash out plastic cups. Ask Mom about that one. Ha!). Toward the end of the evening, we sang Christmas carols. Unfortunately, we started “Angels We Have Heard on High” a little bit too high and Kelly ended up having to resort to extreme measures to hit the high notes. I think my stomach is still sore from laughing.

 

One of the funniest parts of the day for me was when we celebrated birthdays. This year, we lumped October and November birthdays together on Thanksgiving. That gave us 8 birthday people: Jordan, Isaac, Trent, Anna, Aleyna, Alix, Caleb and Glenn (our Virginia cousins, Jordan and Caleb, participated via FaceTime!). In all this melee, during singing all 3 verses of “Happy Birthday to You”, I realized Trent (who turned 4 exactly one month prior), kept turning around and looking at me with a questioning look on his face. In the din, I could just make out him saying “Is it my birthday, too?” I nodded my head yes. Then he said “Am I 5 now???” I just started laughing - it was too noisy to explain it to him right then. Cousin Evan (8) came up and asked him how old he was and he held up 5 fingers. Ha! So glad I had the camera!

***

Like so many other Thanksgivings before, Thanksgiving 2014 was a full, good day filled with so many gifts. My prayer isn’t just that God would continue to bless us, because He does out of His goodness and mercy, but that we would continue to see his blessings and be thankful for them. May we be like the one leper who returned to give thanks, and may we do it daily.

A new trend in feet pajamas?

Someone’s getting very independent around here and wanted to put on his own PJs this evening. When he was coming downstairs, he was calling for me, saying “Something’s wrong!” Uh … yep. At least he realized it. A couple of years ago, he probably would’ve run around with them like that. Ha!