Christmas in the Trenches

During the Christmas season I try to read as many Christmas books to the kids as I can squeeze in. It’s not possible to read every night, due to other holiday going-ons, but the kids take turns picking out which story they want to hear when we are snuggled in at home.

Tonight Blake chose Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon. This is a book I picked up at ,where else but,  a thrift store a couple of years ago and  it remains one of our favorites. The author first wrote a song, then a book was developed from that. The touching storyline is loosely based on a Christmas truce that occurred during WWI.

The book also contains a brief author’s note on how he came to compose the song and a historical note on the actual occurrence of the truce. The last pages of the book are the lyrics to the song, itself.

So, to wrap up our story time, we found a video of the author singing the song and watched that. If you have the time, it’s worth viewing, especially at this time of year.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Week

Since today is December 1, I thought I ought to share our Thanksgiving activities with you before it made it too close to Christmas.

We were invited to have our Thanksgiving meal with some good friends of ours. Since, all of our family, except one grandma, still resides in California, we’ve been adopted into a couple other families here. It’s been wonderful having some friends that are so easy to be comfortable with; they even let their kids call me Aunt Shannon. I love that!

Anyways, on to our meal.

Robin decorated our table so nicely. I loved the centerpiece.

                                             

                           

                          

It was so much fun to hear the kids goofing off together at their table. Don’t they look like they’re enjoying the meal?

                          

I should have taken a photo of the food. It was all fabulous! We had turkey, mashed potatoes, 2 kinds of gravy, sweet potatoes, a gluten-free stuffing (which turned out delicious), green salad, corn, green beans, frog whip (whipped cream concoction), rolls and a lot of dessert. Robin’s other half, David, made a homemade Reese’s cheesecake. There was fudge, homemade carrot cake, and a gluten-free pumpkin roll, which was delicious. Since I’ve been gluten-free, I’ve not had a pumpkin roll-so this was a nice treat made for me by Robin’s mom.

We spent the afternoon playing Boggle, then went home for naps so we could rest up for some midnight Wal-Mart shopping deals.  We managed to come home with a laptop for Connor. He’s been saving his money and of course the best deals are the day after (or of) Thanksgiving.

I’ll share next on our town’s tree lighting ceremony that we attended the day after Thanksgiving. It’s pretty picture heavy, so I’ll give it it’s own space!

I hope your holiday was as blessed as ours was.