A Little Shepherd Boy

Today was our church Nativity - Nat's first one!

I had found some material in the remnants basket in Fabric land so was able to make Nat a little tunic and headscarf with some dressing gown cord wrapped around it.

He looked so cute!

The nativity was lovely with all the little children dressed as angels, shepherds, and stable animals.

Some of the older children did the narrating and the little children were led out onto the stage where Nat stood looking very bewildered and sucking his fingers.

After the nativity Joel Virgo was preaching.  He had changed his message from the intended one about the shepherds (in the light of the Connecticut school shooting).  Instead he read about Herod and the slaughter of all the boys aged two years and under in Bethlehem.  Joel was explaining that there are dual threads running throughout the bible, one thread of sin, violence and death and the other thread which is a message of hope, joy and peace. 

Joel reminded us that we live in a sinful world and that the terrible things that happen in this world are because of the sinful natures of our hearts and that each of us has the capacity to do dreadful things.  We might not go as far as to murder other people but we each have it within us to do harm to others.  That is the reason why God sent his son Jesus to become man and our saviour so that he could become the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate solution. We can therefore all look forward to the day when Jesus reigns over all the earth and there will be an end to sin, pain, suffering, sickness and disease.

Fairytale Gingerbread Cottage

On Friday while David was ill in bed, Nathaniel and I started to get into the Christmas spirit.

First we read some Christmas books together.

Then we donned our aprons to start making gingerbread.

Recipe:

180g butter
125g brown sugar
300g golden syrup
500g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
extra flour for rolling.

First we preheated the oven to 150 degrees.

Then we weighed out all our ingredients.

I melted the butter in a large pan over a low heat then added the sugar and syrup.

We placed all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and I poured over  the syrup mix and Nat gave it all a good stir.

We tipped the dough onto a floured surface and kneaded with more flour until it was a thick dough consistency.

We used a gingerbread cottage mould from Lakeland which was much easier to use than messing around with templates and cutting the individual pieces. You just tear off bits of gingerbread and squash them into the mould, pressing them down with your fingers.

Then we popped the moulds onto a large baking tray and baked for approximately 25 minutes until the gingerbread was golden brown.

We left the gingerbread to cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes by which time Seb was home from school.

I made up some Royal icing and Seb assisted me in assembling the cottage - quite a fiddly job but with his help we finally managed it.

I then piped around the windows and doors and we decorated the cottage with jelly tots, fruity tooties, dolly mixtures and snowies for roof tiles.

With the left over royal icing Nat decorated our Christmas cake.

It was a lovely day followed by my book club meal at the Little Bay restaurant on the seafront in Brighton. Unfortunately David was still not feeling well enough to join me so I caught the bus by myself.

It was so windy that as I walked down West Street my new birthday umbrella (a gift from David) blew inside out and the spokes all bent and came apart from the material so i had to abandon it and run the rest of the way to the Little Bay.

It is a wonderful little place laid out like the inside of a theatre with the tables all in private boxes  / booths with red theatre curtains and gold candelabra everywhere.  There is live opera singing on Wednesday to Saturday nights which was a really fun and novel touch.  The food was really good value and absolutely delicious. 

When I got home I caught up on the news about the school shooting in Connecticut in America where twenty small children and six teachers were gunned down.  Such an awful and hideous event - those poor families. It is so hard to contemplate or understand what on earth would lead someone to massacre little children like that - and so close to Christmas too.  I think the news will have shocked and appalled people around the world.

 Our children are so precious and it reminds me how important it is to enjoy every possible minute with them as we never know how long we will have with them.

Poorly Boys

After a lovely day on Wednesday I was awake all night with Nathaniel who was repeatedly and violently sick several times during the night.

We had to change his pyjamas and bedding several times and I even had to ask David to go up into the loft to dig out the spare duvets and pillows when I ran out of bedding.

The poor little one kept asking for water and i could not get him to understand that every time he drank water he would be sick again 20 minutes later but if i didn't give him any he got very distressed and screamed!  I therefore just had to resign myself to an endless cycle of vomit - changing clothes and bedding - giving water and vomit again!!

Needless to say I was absolutely shattered by the time 6.30am arrived at which point Nat finally fell asleep.  However, David and I had to drag ourselves to work.  David because he had some important meetings and I because I had three urgent pieces of work to finish and it was the last day in the office with my boss before she takes an extended period of leave.

My brain was not working all too well though and I was glad to come home.  Nat seemed much brighter by the evening, still not eating but after sitting still all day he did eventually get up and ask to play with his cars.

Thankfully a peaceful night for me and I managed to catch up on some much needed sleep.  Not so for poor David though. He had a terrible night and was awake with a splitting headache and feeling nauseous himself.  He hasn't gone to work today so will miss his work Christmas lunch which is a shame but at least I am at home to look after him I suppose.

Of course I had a mountain of washing to do yesterday and now a mountain of ironing to do today.
Oh the joys of motherhood.

A Spiritual Relay Race

Claire Coggan came to speak to our mums prayer group this morning.  It was a really interesting and helpful talk with plenty of advice and wisdom for us mums.

Claire referred to a talk given by Tracy Law two weeks ago which I unfortunately missed.  Tracy had talked about how we each have our own race to run and our own lane to run in and that we should therefore not be comparing ourselves to other runners in the race or where they are on their journey.

Claire shared that she had been given a picture of a relay race and explained that it is our jobs as mothers to not only run our own race to the best of our ability but also to ensure that the baton gets safely passed from one generation to the next.  As mums we have an important role to play in ensuring that spiritual truths and a spritual legacy are passed to our children - particularly if we want them to grow up to love Jesus and to be part of his kingdom.

Claire warned us that what defines and shapes us will affect how well we can disciple our children and that it is important for us to create a kingdom culture in our homes.

Sometimes our own experiences and relationships with our natural parents will affect and impact on how we can relate to our heavenly father.  Therefore if we grew up feeling we had to earn our parents love or were not worthy of it then it is possible we can believe the same things in our relationship with God.  Whereas God loves us unconditionally.  It is hard for us to truly conceive of what unconditional love really is and we risk bringing all kinds of misconceptions and untruths into our relationship with God and if we aren't careful we will pass those same misconceptions onto our children.

So how do we create a kingdom culture?  We reap what we sow.

We should:

*   Have intention - if we don't intend there to be a kingdom culture in our home, there won't be one
*   Talk of God's ways
*   Ensure God is part of our daily conversations with our children
*   Chat about God, remind our children how great he is and encourage them to trust in him to do the impossible
*   Teach our children to give and to reach out to others with the love of God
*   Demonstrate forgivenes to our children and teach them to do the same
*   Carve out time to spend with God but not to feel under law about it
*   Say sorry to our children when we fall short
*   Expect to hear from God through our children
*   Teach our children to hear God and to sense his presence
*    Pray together with our children and ask them what they see
*    Have good spiritual resources in our homes - bibles, music and books to share
*   Expose our children to where God is moving by sharing stories and testimonies from around the world with them
*   Build a culture of expectation
*  Use games to enhance their understanding of God and what he is like e.g. for each letter of the alphabet decribe a different facet of what God is like.  God is Amazing, God is Beautiful, God is Caring etc.
*  Listen to our childrens' dreams and help them to interpret them
*  Build a lasting friendship with our children
*  Fast together as a family - if not from food then from something like the TV
*  Find running partners who can help mentor and disciple us through the different stages and seasons of motherhood.

Christmas Bunting that I made at the weekend.

Quite a challenging but inspiring morning!!

Three meals out

 

It has been a busy weekend.  On Friday I met up with the mum's from the parenting course I recently did.  It was nice to see those that could make it and to catch up on all their news.  We met in the cafe at the Emmaeus Community centre in Portslade. I had to take Nat with me and he was fairly well behaved.  I left him at the table while I went to order our lunch, when I came back the girls told me he had been telling them all about Father Christmas giving him a chocolate.

The other night the local Rotary club came down our street with their float and huge inflatable santa.  They play Christmas music and ring all the door bells to collect money.  When they saw Nathaniel they called Father Christmas over with a bucket of chocolates and let Nat choose one.  He was so taken with the experience that he has been telling everyone he sees all about it.

Anyway the lunch was delicious.  I had some hot fruit punch to drink and some lovely spicy butternut squash and sweet potato soup.  Nat had a tuna sandwich and then we shared a slice of lemon cake.

After saying good bye to the girls Nat and I popped into the Emmaeus community shop and I managed to pick up a couple of bargain items for Christmas presents.

Yesterday afternoon Seb and I popped into town to go Christmas shopping and David took Nat shopping with him.  I did quite well and only have two more people to buy for.  I am not sure whether everyone will like what I have bought them as we are on a bit of a budget this year but I am just relieved to have found something for everyone.

Decorations in our downstairs toilet  - tasteful . . . NOT!
And I am still waiting for someone to come and
 replace the broken window.

Last night we were invited over to dinner with David's friends Olive and Keith.  We had a really lovely evening.  They were about nine of us and it was nice to meet all their other friends.  The house looked all cosy and Christmassy with an open fire burning and lots of candles and lovely holly wreaths.  Olive had cooked the most delicious curry dishes - all fairly mild which suits me just fine.  There was a very tasty rice dish, a lovely chicken curry.  My favourite lentil dahl and another lentil and spinach dahl and a prawn curry too.  Then all the usual trimmings - naan bread, pappadums, chutney etc. For desert there was a nut strudel, fruit salad or strawberries.  We were enjoying ourselves so much we completely lost track of time!

Today we went to Church.  David was serving on the welcome team so we arrived early and the boys and I enjoyed watching the band rehearse.  The hall looked really lovely with low lights and Christmas fairy lights hanging from the ceiling.  I sat with my friends Chitrani and Gill which was nice as I haven't seen either of them for a couple of weeks.

This evening we went over to my parents house for dinner with them their students Diana, Carlos and Ehab. 

All in all a very relaxing and pleasant weekend but my good intentions of being restrained and trying to lose some weight before Christmas have been completely abandoned.  Talking of which I feel a bit peckish . . . . anyone for a mince pie?

Christmas Kids Craft

Today has been a day of mixed emotions.

A friend of mine is in really difficult circumstances and it has been really hard not being able to help her to resolve her situation.

This afternoon Seb and I had fun taking photos for his art project on emotions.  We both pulled lots of funny faces trying to express various different emotions from happiness, sadness, anger to anxiety.  I won't show the results because our efforts were pretty lame and rather embarassing!

Seb had a party this evening - his friend Ben has taken him Bowling so Nat and I had some time alone together to do a bit of craft.

I had bought this little Christmas craft kit from my friend KT at our church Festive Fayre.

Nat did some colouring.

I had to help a bit as he was more interested in doing the glueing.

However, don't look too closely as he was in a bit of a rush and was not too keen on me doing it neatly and staying within the lines.  he just wanted to get to the sticking bit!!

Then we added the pretty tinsel string

Folded and glued the decorations together

and this is the result.

I wonder if Grandma and Grandad would like these on their tree  . . . .?   It would be a pity to spoil my colour scheme!

Tea with a friend

A very pleasant and enjoyable Sunday today.

David and I had a lie in this morning waking only just in time to get to Church!

We had a lovely family lunch and then this afternoon my old school friend Alison (Ali) popped over for tea and cake.

We had a lovely chat catching up on the last few months since her wedding and honeymoon (and looking at all her lovely wedding and honeymoon photos).  It was a really really pleasant afternoon and we promised to make more of an effort to see each other more regularly in the New Year.

Made a start on writing some Christmas cards this evening.  I had to rewrite my Christmas card list as I simply can't find my old one.  Had to stop to tackle the huge pile of ironing that seems to magically replenish itself no sooner than I have hung the freshly ironed clothes in the wardrobe.

The 'Nice' list!

I do like weekends.  Such a shame it is Monday tomorrow - not my favourite day of the week as it is my longest day at work but I have my sewing class to look forward to tomorrow evening -we are taking up our hems tomorrow!!

Have a great week!

Yay the Christmas Decorations are up!!

So after a really manic few weeks (haven't even had chance to blog) it was so lovely to wake up today and to make a start on decorating the house in readiness for Christmas.

OK so I know that 1st December might be a little early for some but I looooovvveeee Christmas and especially having my lovely decorations up.

Nothing nicer than a twinkling house at this time of year.

I also had to pop into town for more Christmas shopping and had to give up and catch the bus home when my arms couldn't hold any more bags.

So the tree is up.  Nat was very excited to see the pretty lights and tinsel and he was very helpful at putting baubles on the tree - all at the bottom of course!!

Thankfully Seb is now nearly as tall as me and was able to ensure the rest of the tree was evenly decorated.

We had the Christmas music playing and David and I both had a glass of martini while we worked.

David had the fun job of assembling our reindeer and sleigh lights.

Seb found a couple of old Christmas crackers which he insisted that he and Nat needed to pull at dinner tonight - something about celebrating 'putting up the Christmas tree day'!

 

 

Nat was delighted with his cracker toy and later pulled up his little wicker chair in front  of the Christmas tree to wait for father Christmas.  Poor love, he doesn't realise he has to wait another 24 days!!

Oh and I bought a Christmas candle in town today - we will light it each night and watch it burn down until we get to Christmas day!!

This evening I helped Seb make a Christmas present for Grandma.

Still haven't made a start on the Christmas cards but I have put a layer of marzipan on my Christmas cake so I am gradually ticking things of the Christmas to do list!

Was supposed to bake a cake today in honour of my friend Ali who is coming over tomorrow but she may have to make so with a hurriedly bought shop one as I simply ran out of time!!