Christmas Gratitude 449-461

Early afternoon on Christmas Day, we made our way across town to my Dad's house. As we sat at the stop light in the middle of town, I looked over. There it was again. The Reminder. The Constant Reminder of our loss.

She laid in that hospital for weeks and every time I drive through town, I'm reminded of that. As I sat there looking at it again, I was reminded of the many Christmas' that we came to their house. She was always dressed nice, dress pants and a sweater. The house was decorated, the table was set, the food was cooking, and the presents were under the huge Christmas tree. I never knew how much time, planning, and work she put into making everything perfect until she was gone. Her love and sacrifice for her family. It's just not the same without her there. This was our 5th Christmas without her.

I was also reminded of so many that were spending their first Christmas with an empty chair at their table. Friends this year who have lost a husband, a sister, a mother, a brother. And they will soon be starting a new year without them as well.

Death. An ugly reminder of the sin in this world.

Death. A reminder of why we celebrate Christmas. The Christ child, who humbled himself to come to this earth because we are sinners. The ultimate sacrifice. He became man. He suffered. He died.

All of this reminds us that in the imperfections, the hurts, the pains of this world.......We need to be Thankful. And so I continue my list of gratitude.

449-461

Love came down

Health on Christmas Day (after Brad and I both had strep throat)

A candlelit Christmas breakfast

A White Christmas

Family

Kids reciting verses as we read through the Advent Book

Carol singing

Lights that remind me of "The Light"

Gifts that remind me of "The Gift"

Mounds of paper

Joy on Children's faces

Screams of delight

Good food

"in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."
I Thessalonians 5:18

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of you! I hope you all have a blessed few days celebrating our Savior's birth and spending time with family and friends.

 I thought I would share our Christmas letter with you just in case you aren't on our Christmas card list or I forgot to send you one.

Dear Friends and Family,

Another year has flown by and we are once again back to the holiday season of shopping, baking, parties, decorating, and for me….lots of list making! Every year I try to make it a little less hectic and stressful but have yet to achieve that perfect balance.

The year of 2010 has been a year of some exciting change around our house. For the first time we sent our kids off to school. Alexandra, Amanda, and Joshua turned 6 in July and started Kindergarten at Lansing Christian. Isaac turned 5 in August and started pre-k at the same school. They are all loving school and doing very well. I love to see their excitement when they come home and tell me all about their day. Especially when Isaac retells his Bible story, it’s one of my favorite parts of the day!

It’s fun to see them grow and it’s amazing how they all have such different personalities and interests. Joshua still loves watching and playing sports. He loved playing baseball in the back yard with Brad almost everyday this summer and played on a soccer team in the fall. Alexandra is my little artist. She could draw and color all day long. I love to see what she comes up with next and it seems her drawings continue to get more and more detailed. Amanda is our motherly child, she never likes to see anyone hurting, is always willing to help out and if she ever finds out you are sick, you will most likely be included in her prayers before bed. Isaac is our music lover! You will often find him with his guitar or his drums just singing is little heart out. He also loves to work and is always by Brad’s side. He has no aspirations of playing sports, he just can’t wait until he is old enough to go to work.

As most of you know, there is always a house project going on around here. This year was no different. The big thing that got finished was our back yard. We now have an above ground pool with a deck and we also put in a large back patio and fire pit. So you can imagine that we put that to good use. The kids had a fun summer of swimming, swimming and more swimming! They took lessons in June and are all swimming on their own now. They spent most of their time just throwing diving sticks in and retrieving them. I had to take on the horrible job of sitting by the pool all summer and watching them swim. It’s a rough job but someone had to do it.

For Brad, this year brought a change in jobs. It’s been about 4 years since he left Ford Motor Company but this past August they called him back. He went back for a 90 day temporary position and this month will be taking on a full time position as a supervisor at the stamping plant. We are adjusting to the new schedule and that it doesn’t give him the freedom that he had being self-employed.

And as for me……I am always kept busy by all the work around the house. For the second year in a row I am a Discussion Group Leader at a local MOPS group, which I’ve really enjoyed. About a year and a half ago I became a licensed insurance agent in Property and Casualty Insurance and then this past fall I went back and got my license for Life and Health Insurance and have been selling insurance part time for Midwest Insurance.

As a family we were able to do a little vacationing this year as well. In May, we headed to Bradenton, Florida for about 10 days with a little 2 day trip to Disney in the middle of that. It was great to get away as a family and just relax. We also made use of our camper a couple times. Once, in August in the extreme heat where we almost swore off camping for good, but we gave it another try Labor Day Weekend when it was perfect camping weather. All was good on that trip, so the camper is still with our family. Both trips were to the Indiana Dunes, we don’t like to venture too far away from home just in case we decide sleeping in our home is better. (Can you tell we love camping?)

We hope you all had a blessed 2010 and as you prepare for all your Christmas activities, that you remember to prepare for the coming of the Christ child, the greatest gift that was ever given.

Love~

Brad, Melissa, Alexandra, Amanda, Joshua and Isaac Vis

Christmas Past

I love to go through old pictures of my kids and Christmas is no different. I thought I'd share some of our old Christmas cards and pictures taken of the kids at Christmas time. I know some of these I've shared before but they make me smile every time I see them so thought maybe you would too.

Awww! So innocent and sweet. And as you will see,

 the best Christmas picture ever taken by them.

Then the next year came, we added a child and Christmas pictures became a disaster.

You don't know how many tries it took and still this is the best we came up with in 2006.

2007, 2008, and 2009 came and things were starting to look better.



And here we are in 2010. Always has to be a goofball in the crowd.

Advent

Last year, for the first time, our family purchased an Advent Book. We spent 25 nights as a family reading the book together. It was a great time for us to take some time, sing Christmas carols, read about the coming Messiah, and we also prayed for those who sent us Christmas cards.

We all get so caught up in the shopping, wrapping presents, preparing food, and the anticipation of what we are going to open up on Christmas day. We head to church for a Christmas service, but do we really prepare for the day that we celebrate Christ? or do we prepare for everything else?

Our family really enjoyed taking the time to do this each night and my kids are excited to do it again this year.

If you and your family don't do anything for Advent and would like to start, I thought I would give you a couple helpful resources.

You can find the book that we use over at Celebrations and Traditions. They also have great ideas for things that you and your family can do to celebrate Advent as well as traditions you can start for celebrating other holidays and making them meaningful. They also have a newsletter that you can sign up to receive.

Also, if you've been coming here for any amount of time you already know that I love Ann Voskamp's blog A Holy Experience.  If you head over to her blog you can find a link to download a free Jesse Tree Advent Devotional Book.

How do you and your family celebrate Advent? I'd love to hear what you do.

Gratitude

Webster's Dictionary defines Gratitude as "the state of being grateful, THANKFULNESS".

What I found more interesting were the Synonyms and Antonyms for Gratitude.
Synonyms: appreciation, appreciativeness, gratefulness, thanks, thankfulness
Antonyms: ingratitude, thanklessness, unappreciation, ungratefulness

So, lets just think about this for a minute.

If you aren't thankful you are thankless and if you aren't grateful you are ungrateful. If we are constantly complaining about what we don't have and what we don't like in our life we are being thankless, ungrateful, and unappreciative towards God!

Larry Burkett says in his book The WORD on Finances:

Are we grateful for what we have, rather than resentful for what we don't have? When we look around, there's always someone else who has more. It's easy to ask, "Why did he (or she) get that instead of me?" Satan tries to get us to be discontented by comparing ourselves to others. The way to counteract that is to praise God for what we have and not let what others have affect us. Thankfulness is not based on an accumulation of assets; it is a positive attitude toward life.

Godliness actually is a means of great gain, when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. And if we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. I Timothy 6:6-8

As we just finished celebrating Thanksgiving, I hope you have all been reminded how important it is to be thankful, grateful, and content in all things and if you aren't - you are the antonyms. I don't know what your situation in life is right now but if you have Christ in your life - YOU ARE RICH! May that be your focus!

My list of gratitude continues:

435~ people who keep me laughing

436~ friends that hold me accountable

437~ passing my insurance exam

438~ heat on a cold day

439~ antibiotics

440~ a husband who so willingly takes care of things while I'm sick in bed

441~ well behaved kids that let me rest

442~ Isaac's retelling of Bible stories when he comes home from school

443~ pumpkin cupcakes

444~ cream cheese frosting

445~ licking the bowl

446~ blinds finally hanging on windows after years without them

447~ books that inspire

448~ secrets whispered in my ear from my kids


Join the Gratitude Community at A Holy Experience.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from 2 Indian boys and 2 pilgrim girls (and their mom and dad too!)

May you all have a great day spending time with family, eating turkey, and being thankful to our God for all the good gifts He has blessed you with.

My 2 Favorite Pumpkin Cakes

This week is Thanksgiving and that means Pumpkin Desserts! One of my favorite things to make! This year I was asked to bring dessert to 2 family gatherings. Although I absolutely love this, I am having a hard time deciding on just 2 pumpkin desserts! I have so many that I love. There are pumpkin cakes, pumpkin bars, pumpkin pies, pumpkin cheesecakes, pumpkin rolls.

You see my dilemma?

I thought I would share with you a couple of my favorite pumpkin recipes.

The first is just a plain old pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting that has become a favorite of my kids and many others too. I love to make this into cupcakes. It's a great finger food to just grab when you want a little dessert because you are too stuffed from turkey.

Pumpkin Cake

4 eggs
2 C. sugar
1 C. oil
1 (16oz.) can pumpkin

Mix together and then sift in the following: (I hate sifting,so I generally don't do it)

2 C. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp.salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. cloves (sometimes I substitute allspice for this)

Place in greased 9x13 inch pan and a greased 8x8 pan. Preheat oven to 350 and bake for 25 minutes. If you decide to make these into cupcakes, bake them about 17 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 (3oz.) pkg cream cheese
3 T. butter

Beat until smooth and add 2 C. powdered sugar and 1 tsp. vanilla. I love frosting, so I make a double batch!

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My second recipe is a Pumpkin Sandwich Cake. I made this a couple years ago and was a little worried with the Pumpkin/Chocolate combination. When I tasted this cake, I was IN LOVE! I think this is one of the best cakes I have ever eaten.

Instead of typing out the whole recipe, I am just going to give you the link.

Pumpkin Sandwich Cake at Better Homes and Gardens

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!