Christmas Choir and Bell Choir

Hope everyone is having a great Christmas! Here's a bit of what we've been up to this season.

The last couple of years, the teens and kids at our church had prepared big dramas. This year, the formed a children's vocal choir and teen bell choir. They've been practicing all fall, and had two performances the week before Christmas.

The first was at a nursing home. Here's the kids warming up beforehand.

Ashlynn keeping an eye on the kids.

The bell choir. They did such a good job!

The kids.

It was such a cute performance. I just wish I had bought a video camera before hand!

Reformation Day

Last Saturday we gathered with our church family to celebrate Reformation Day. We do it on the 31st of October every year to celebrate the anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing of the 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg church in Germany. Each year we study and discuss a particular reformer from the period of the Reformation and his life as well as the impact he had on church history. We also cook food from the country the reformer hailed from.

This year being the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, we of course had to read about Calvin. Since Calvin was French and later moved to Geneva, Switzerland, we had French and Swiss foods. Yum!

I found a recipe for a French apple tart that was, even if I did make it, was goooood. It took a while to slice up all the apples, especially since I made two of them, but I laid them on a pastry crust:

The diagonal pattern made them pretty. That's butter dabbed on top.

Just before they were to come out of the oven, I heated up a combination of apricot jelly (all I had was preserves, so I stuck them in the blender for a couple of pulses) and rum. Double yum. After that heated up and reduced, I spread the mixture on top of the apples. Pastry, granny smith apples, and a rum apricot sauce. Triple yum.

Normal, almost

It has been so nice to spend a "normal" weekend at home. No going out of town, no half-day rehearsals for musicals. Just household chores, honey-dos, cleaning, errand running, and cooking. Best of all it will be so nice to be back at church and eating lunch with our church family. Between being sick and being out of town 2-3 weekends out of four each month, we've been pretty hit-or-miss at church since late July. AND we haven't been to a Sunday lunch since the girls' baptism feast in June! Our girls are so excited that we'll get to each lunch at church tomorrow; it's their favoratist. :-)

The only thing keeping it from being completely normal is our resident cripple. Not me, but Kora. It should be illegal for the oldest daughter of a large family to break a leg and not be able to pull her weight around here. LOL We've had to spread her chores around, though Aubrey and I have been doing the brunt of them. She makes up for it by sitting and doing all of the laundry folding instead.

When I was running errands today, I was amazed again at how almost all the things I needed for Kora's fall wardrobe I found either on clearance or at the second hand store. I'm also thankful that due to several clearance purchases at the end of last season and some clothes we've been given, she didn't need as much as she normally does. I need these small reminders that God takes care of our every need.

I also bought another large purchase of ground beef. See this post for what I mean. For several months I've been splitting the case with other families, but I decided to keep all of this one. The price is lower than it's been in months. And going into the holidays and with the possibility of surgery still looming over me, I decided to go ahead and keep the whole thing. It will be so nice to have 80 pounds of ground beef in the deep freezer either cooked up, simplifying meal prep, or in smaller portions raw, ready for meatloaves and such. So between this and all the good deals on chicken lately, my freezer will be well stocked!

Finally, the kids' play

On October 3, the kids from our church performed "Psalty's Camping Adventure," a musical play in which the big blue singing hymnal "Psalty" takes a bunch of kids camping and they all learn a valuable lesson in trusting God. All five of my kids had at at least a couple of lines and a couple had solos.

Ever wondered what a walking, talking, big blue hymnal looks like? Here he is.Here's Kora and Aubrey dancing and singing during one of the songs.
Meanwhile, here's Lauryn off to the side with the other 4-5 year olds. They had their own special parts in the play - mainly for humor and a cuteness factor.
In fact they had their own song - here's Lauryn and a little boy singing.
Hailey's character gets into the poison ivy, so here, she's just told Psalty that she wants to go home because she's "itchy, itchy, itchy!"
More singing.
The kids' favorite pose at the end of one of the songs.
Taking a bow.
Nana giving the girls roses.
This picture was taken approximately 12 minutes before Kora broke her leg.

Big weekend

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. We had a big weekend, which included my husband having a terrible head cold, which I seemed to have been fighting earlier in the week. Now that I am feeling mostly normal again, I can post.

This past Sunday our five younger girls were baptized at our church, Presbyterian style. This family picture was taken after services. No, I didn't buy the dresses for this occasion, we had them from family pictures taken a few years ago when we only had 5 kids (remember that, honey?).
When I pulled these pictures off my camera, I was struck at how TALL Kora is. No way my 12 year old is almost as tall as me. Granted, she's wearing heels, albeit low ones. But so was I! How did this happen?

Next thing you know, she'll be wearing the same size shoe as I do. Oh wait, she DOES! Next thing you know she'll be calling herself a teenager. Oh no, that's in 6 months! Again, how does this happen?

In other news, we have a big announcement to make soon, so stay tuned. (And no, it does NOT have anything to do with a new baby, pregnancy, or any of the children for that matter.) I'll let you in on it in a few days!

I can't believe I forgot my camera!

We had our church's 5th anniversary picnic/swim party today and...

I FORGOT MY CAMERA!

The house we were at is about 45 minutes from my house, so there was no going back to get it. But we had a great time, even though all the sunscreen in the world couldn't have kept the kids from getting sunburned. And believe me, I put about half the world's supply on them every hour. Those redheads, especially... Let's just say their skin now matches. :-)

Miss you guys who couldn't make it (and you know who you are!).

5 Years

Today is the 5th anniversary of our church that we helped plant here in San Antonio. Six years ago, a group of seven men started meeting about once every week or two to set up the constitution for the church as well as other framework needed. Although several of the men had years of pastoring experience, none of them had participated in a church plant before. It was exciting and scary at the same time.

The men had a vision for a family-integrated church. This is not a new idea, of course but a rather old one. The whole family worships together without nurseries, children's church, or youth groups. The parents, namely the fathers, are the primary teachers of their own children. In other words, it's how churches operated until very recent history. After a year of these start-up meetings by the men, the church began worshipping together the first Sunday of June, 2004.

We all laugh a little at the first weeks we met as a congregation. Our first few Sundays we had 10-12 families, with children under the age of 13 far outnumbering the teens and adults. And most of the kids 4 and under were not used to sitting through a church service. So it was, shall we say, just a little noisy.

Five years later, it is amazing to see where God has brought us. Not only have our children gone beyond learning to sit through a long church service to actually learning to worship, but I have seen such growth in our families. Not just in the number that worship with us, though that has certainly increased as well, but in the closeness we have together and the spiritual maturity I have seen many of the members show under the most trying circumstances. Our church has had some wonderful highs and some devastating lows, attacks of every kind.

But through it all, God has been faithful. Through all the long months of meeting to set the church up, to the years before we were able to take our pastor on full time, to all the trials, God had a plan. And His will is good and perfect, though we are not.

Thank you, Lord for the church family you have put us in. Thank you for your faithfulness over the past 5 years. Keep us always in your will, disciplining us when we need it. Guide and keep us. Help us to do the good work which you created for us to do - to each other and to the lost. Help us to always proclaim the truth of your gospel and minister to all with love.

Amen.

Excerpts from Maundy Thursday

I promise I do have some longer blog posts in the works, but for tonight I had to share something that happened at dinner tonight.

Kelly was reading the passages from Luke about the Lord's Supper and his prayer at the garden and then we were discussing it with the girls. Then Kelly got to this section:

Luke 22:36

And He said to them, "But now, whoever has a purse is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his robe and buy one.

The girls then got the weirdest look on their faces. I just thought it was because it was strange to think of the disciples needing swords. But what really worried them was the robes.

Or rather the lack of them. They were picturing a bunch of naked disciples running around, brandishing their swords. Kelly and I got a good laugh out of that one before he explained that it meant their outer cloak or coat. So much for a serious discussion about Holy week!

Eleven Kids

A dear friend of mine is sitting up in the hospital with her very sick 4 year old. Little Sam has severe asthma and when he get sick... well, it ain't pretty. And unfortunately this time, her husband was out of town when he was admitted.

Anyway, several of us in our church have been pitching in and hosting her older kids while she is at the hospital and her husband is gone. Today, I had 5 extra kids at my house. You know you have a pretty good size family when 5 extra kids doesn't make a dent in your psyche. I just had to make a few extra hot dogs.

The real difference is that four of the kids were boys, which is something that doesn't happen too much around here. Fortunately we have Star Wars movies and a pretty cool swing set in the back yard. After lunch, the boys were teaching the girls a few games.

A couple of the boys taught Kora how to play Stratego, a game we've had for a while but they didn't know how to play.
Others were playing card games. I think this one is "slap jack."
Josh found a word game to play.
And the younger girls were upstairs with my friend's lone daughter in little girl heaven.
My kids have had a blast. Hopefully, little Sam will be well enough to come home soon!

Worship

The perfect church service would be the one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping. . . . Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the god. A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. . . . There is really some excuse for the man who said, “I wish they’d remember that the charge to Peter was ‘Feed my sheep’; not ‘Try experiments on my rats’, or even ‘Teach my performing dogs new tricks.'

C.S. Lewis

A Thousand Things

Now that I am finally feeling better, I have a thousand things I want to run around and do all at once: scrub the refrigerator, clean out my files, put my new calendar in my day runner, make new curtains for my dining room, study for our first ladies Bible study, bake bread, clip the coupons from today's papers (yes I got two!), get all my ducks in a row for school starting back in a week, run on the elliptical machine, make a list of the history and literature books I'll need in the next few weeks, shred old financial documents we don't need anymore, scrub our shower, finish decorating our bedroom...

Of course, I won't get all that done this week. But I can't wait to tackle some of it anyway! Best of all, it was wonderful to be back at church today!

Oh, and if you didn't get a paper today, it was a great coupon edition! So if you clip coupons, it would be well worth going out and snagging a paper or two!

Catching Up

I cannot believe that I am still fighting this bug. I just today started wrapping presents and have let a thousand little things go this season. I just hope I am back to normal soon!

In the meantime, here are some things that I have missed blogging about lately:

Aubrey played her first offertory at church yesterday. Of course I wasn't there, so I sent the camera with Kora. I instructed her to get a couple of pictures of Aubrey warming up before church. She followed my instructions to the letter, but I realized after I uploaded the pictures that I failed to mention that I wanted one of them at least to be of her face!

***
Here are some pictures with faces: on the 6th, the girls performed in the studio's Christmas recital. Aubrey played "What Child is This?" and Kora played "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."

***
Kora and Aubrey found this hat that goes with some "Baby's First Christmas" pajamas and have been putting it on Ashlynn nearly every day. At least someone around here is getting in the holiday spirit!

Isn't she just the cutest thing ever?
Tomorrow: the first edition of Conversations with a Four Year Old!

Reformation Day

Last night our church celebrated Reformation Day at a member's house. Each year we have a theme country - one of the countries instrumental in the reformation. About every other year we do Germany, which is, of course, the heart of the reformation. We start off by eating supper together.

A table full of German food! And a kitchen full of German desserts (somehow I didn't get a picture of that!)

We also visited, er, uh, fellowshipped. Is that a word?

You know her, right?

This is Kora and Addie. Addie is an adorable toddler in our church. Kora wants to grow up to be her mother. Seriously though, Addie has been adopted be several of the teenagers and almost teenagers at church. I'm surprised she ever learned to walk, as they are always carrying her around. Kora loves that little girl, and the feeling is mutual.

Finally everyone started gathering in the living room and quieted down. It was time for some hymns.

Here's hubby, our song leader.

Brynna has fallen in love with two of the older couples in our church. Here she is with one of them. She sits with them at meals, talks with them before and after services (she waits for them near the front door if we are at church first), and here she sits with them while singing.
After the hymn-sing (which included "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" by Martin Luther, of course) the younger kids went to another room to color pictures of Martin Luther.

Our pastor gave a brief history of Luther's life and some of his contributions to the church. He also talked about why it is still important today.

We look forward to Reformation Day every year!

Reformation Day/Remembrance Day

October 31st is the day many Protestants have on their calendars. Reformation Day is a time to look back at God's Providence in our history and to remember some of the saints that went before us. Tonight, our church will be having a German themed feast and we'll be discussing the German Reformation. I'm bringing "Chicken in Riesling." I didn't even read the full recipe before choosing it - it had me at the word "Riesling."

I'll post pictures and more comments about this tomorrow.

But for my family this will also be a remembrance day of sorts. It's been one year since my grandfather passed away. I actually got the call at our Reformation dinner last year. It's been a tough year for my mom and grandmother. I don't know if next year will be any easier, but I know right now is especially hard for them.

I miss him too. He was always fun, had a great sense of humor. He could make jokes about his bald head all day. He loved to talk to all the grandkids, play card games all evening. He was a carpenter by trade, and knew how to build anything.

One of the things I've been thinking about today was his voice. He had a very raspy voice, or rather, what was left of his voice. Throat cancer and resultant surgeries had done permanent damage to his vocal chords. I don't really remember his singing voice before this, but I know afterward, it was hard for him to sing, but he loved doing it. He loved hymns.

So today, as we celebrate the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us, I'll be thinking of my Granddad, singing for the past year before the throne of God. I hope he has the voice he wished he'd had here on earth. Because while on earth he could wholeheartedly sing:

Come thou fount of ev'ry blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above;
praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of God's unchanging love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I've come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wand'ring from the fold of God:
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be;
let that grace now, like a fetter,
bind my wand'ring heart to thee.
Prone to wander - Lord, I feel it -
prone to leave the God I love:
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

"Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" by Robert Robinson, 1758

Who Knew Paradise Was So Close?

Saturday, we went to Paradise Canyon, about 25 minutes west of us on the Rio Medina River. Some friends from church were celebrating their 10th anniversary by renewing their vows and afterwards, their four oldest children were being baptized. So it was a special day for their family as well as our church.
It was also a beautiful day and a beautiful location. I didn't feel like I was near San Antonio at all! Plus the weather was a little overcast and breezy - just enough to keep us comfortable. It also would lightly rain on us occasionally - again just enough to keep the temperatures down - and reminded more than one of us of the weather in Hawaii.
They have a beautiful lodge out there that our friends had rented which made a great place to serve lunch, change clothes, nurse a baby, etc. It was huge!
Our pastor, Dirk, performed the marriage covenant renewal service. It was simple, heartfelt, and very sweet.
Then JD washed his wife's feet, as a symbol of being a servant leader in the home. I'm not sure Shannon knew about this part, because she looked a little surprised to me.
Then Dirk did a quick clothes change and came back out to baptize the kids. That water was quite chilly, too!
(I'm sure some of you are wondering, so I'll just add that our church does pour or immerse, depending on the convictions of the family.)
I am kicking myself for not getting any more pictures of after the ceremony. We had a wonderful catered lunch, and the kids swam, rode in a paddle boat, inner tubed, splashed, jumped off 10-12 foot cliffs into the water, and just generally had a great time. It was a beautiful place, and I can't wait to go back sometime!

Still Pregnant

No, this blog lapse does not mean I had the baby and forgot to tell anybody. I just had a busy weekend. Kelly did too, as he had some make up work to do since he had missed a couple of days of work last week due to a cold. Fortunately he was able to bring it home and do it.

I saw the midwife on Saturday morning and everything still looks pretty good. She's still a little concerned about the baby's position. Baby is head down so that's fine, but she's got her shoulders turned just like Lauryn did which caused a painful back labor. We are praying she turns to a better position before labor begins. Next Saturday the midwives come to my house for my appointment - for a home birth, that means you are getting really close!

Saturday night we were getting ready for Easter. That afternoon I cleaned and polished the white dress shoes. As usual, we prepared Sunday breakfast right after supper. The girls and I pulled out all the dresses and the girls had an early shower. While pulling out dresses, etc., I discovered that nearly all the girls needed new tights, so I had to make another quick dash to Walmart while Kelly bathed the younger girls. I also set out hair bows so I wouldn't be scrambling in the morning.

After showers, Kelly cleaned and trimmed fingernails and toenails, and I painted all the girls' nails - a Smith family Easter tradition. What else do you do with a house full of girls? We also changed earrings to match, and tried as best we could to gather everything we would need.
Here's our beautiful gaggle of girls right before we left for church.

Easter service at church was wonderful, as always. We had a light bite to eat right after church and then went to a friends' house for a big meal later in the afternoon. The kids hunted Easter eggs and had a great time.

I love the traditional Easter greeting:

He is risen!

He is risen, indeed!

Busy, girly, super fun weekend

We've had a busy, but good weekend.

Friday my two older girls had a slumber party (their first!) at one of the church member's houses. They had invited all the girls from church - that's right, ALL. That's around 20 girls. And that's only ones ages 8 and up. This family wanted to do something special for the daughters of another church member - their dad is serving in Iraq right now. So they had a "Super Fun Happy Glittery Pink Girly Party Sleepover" as they dubbed it. Well, my two girls sure had fun.

I had a doctor's appointment Friday afternoon, and afterward Kelly and I had planned a date night, so we traded babysitting with another couple from church. They watched our younger three girls Friday evening and soon we will return the favor. We had a great time. We got to eat good sea food, Kelly got ammo, we bought Kelly a couple of suits (a late Christmas present), and got new bluetooth headsets to go with our new razor cell phones. More on those in a minute.

Saturday, Kelly went to the range. He took one of the teenaged boys from church and I'm not sure who had more fun: Kelly or the boy. Kelly loves to go to the range and pass on his love of guns, and what teenaged boy wouldn't like to spend a Saturday morning that way??? While he was gone, I went to pick up the girls, who had had a total of about 5 hours sleep, and a week's worth of pizza, soda, sweets, and breakfast food. Evidently the teenagers cooked a feast for breakfast. Kora (aged 11) can now out eat Kelly most of the time. She informed me about breakfast. "I had a couple of biscuits with jelly, a couple of sausage patties, some bacon, 2-3 eggs, and that was just my first helping. I went back for more."

Me: "Did you leave any for the rest of them?"

K: "Oh, yeah, I was nearly at the back of the line."

All the boys from church were over at the pastor's house, and I was informed that they waaaaaay out ate the girls. I guess all the girls don't eat like Kora.

Oh, and this is what Kora looked like when I picked her up:

Evidently this is what you do at a sparkly girly pretty pink super fun sleepover. I forgot to take a picture of their fingernails, which sported 10 different shades of polish. I also didn't get a picture of Aubrey's hair, but she had two long braids that looked really cute as well.

When Kora took them out last night to take a shower, she looked like this:

Yesterday afternoon I hit a few stores to grab some sales going on. I also hit CVS today - this is a great CVS week this week. I have decided that the Ides of March (everyone does know the historical reference that is, correct?) is some sort of big sale weekend for some reason. Here's some of what we got this weekend:

* 2 Motorola Bluetooth headsets - $4.99 each plus tax (after rebate - I love Spoofee.com! That's where I saw this offer at Office Depot posted.)
* chicken breasts $1.69 per lb, 8 grapefruits for $1 at Sun Harvest (They had a huge 72 hour sale this weekend - I've never seen that place so full! Lots of good stuff on sale I didn't get!)
* chicken quarters for $0.43 per pound at HEB
* six boxes of Honey Bunches of Oats cereal for 8 cents a box and two gallons of Bordon's milk for $2.69 each at Walmart (I had 6 $2-off coupons for the cereal which costs $2.08 at WM. I receive the La Fiesta grocery store circular in the mail every week, and they had their Bordon's milk on sale. Wal mart price matched it, plus I had 2 $1 off coupons. The cereal I am saving for after the baby comes. The milk won't last that long.)
*Today at CVS I got all this:

for $2.98 out of pocket.

That's combining all of these on sale (except the Lansinoh, which I am just going to need soon) with $40 in CVS and manufacturer coupons, and $35 in ECBs. Plus I came out with at least as many ECBs as I did going in.

We will not be on spring break this week. We are taking a combined late spring break/ baby break/ summer break starting April 11. So my kids only have 4 more weeks of school, and one of those will be pretty much eaten up with standardized testing. If your family is on spring break this week, I hope it is a good one!