Happy Birthday, Jesus!

We always make a birthday cake for Jesus and have it for breakfast on Christmas morning. We sing Happy Birthday and then eat!

We bake a dark chocolate cake--this represents our sin.

We put a white frosting on the top--this represents the purity of Jesus--He is our righteousness.

Then we use red hots to write Happy Birthday, Jesus on the top--the red represents the blood of Jesus that washes away our sin.


Oops! This year, Daddy got into the cake and began to cut the pieces before I took a pic. Oh well! :0)

Caleb Got A Guitar for Christmas!

Well, It Happened.....Finally! :0)

Hannah finally lost that 2nd front tooth! Just in time to sing the Christmas song! yeah! She did sing it immediately....All I want for Christmas is my 2 Front teeth. (so, should I wrap them up and put them under the tree???) She was sucking on a sweettart (special treat because she and Caleb were so good at WalMart today--yes, I bribed them!) and sucked it right out! She started laughing--we were in the van and I couldn't really see what was so funny. We were almost home, so once we got there I got the eyeful of the tooth and the empty gum.

She is a precious miracle!

Gray Family Christmas

We had Christmas with all of David's side of the family at Nanny Boo Boo & Poppie's last Saturday. We had a great time together. We ate and ate and ate some more! MMM, good!

Mark brought two guys from the Lazarus Project in Murfreesboro. We enjoyed getting to meet Mark and Thomas. They shared a little bit with us about what their rehabilitation program is like and what it's doing for them. Awesome!

We all brought homemade gifts--I think there were 15 or 16. We laid them out on a table and then one by one Poppie auctioned them off to the highest bidder. We voted ahead of time about some needs in our community and chose one to receive the $$. The Lazarus Project won and....in all we raised $161.00!

The auction was fun and a great idea--Kudos to Mom, Nanny Boo Boo, Esther for coming up with a fun and thoughtful way to share gifts!!!

Then Poppie read the Christmas Story from Luke. We read it aloud with him. At the very end (some already had left) we sang Christmas Carols. It was a wonderful evening together.

Our contribution to the auction: Dakota made the Ojo de Dios, David made the snowmen carolers. I knitted the 2 bags and made the herbal products.

Various pics of the vote and auction.....

Decorating Our Christmas Tree

Well, we finally got the tree up and the lights on it over about 3 evenings the first week of December. Then the next week, we finally had everyone here to add all the ornaments. Hannah really enjoyed it this year. We had our traditional meal of Taco Soup--one evening later--oops! We've had that traditional meal for the night we decorate our tree for about 8 years, now. (Post a reply if you'd like our recipe--yummy!)

Mercy (Hannah's kitty) decided the tree looked like a great place to roost--roost? Wait a minute, is she part chicken?? Hannah and Caleb just thought she was hilarious!

It's been not so funny now that it's all decorated to watch her in the tree. She's really good though, she's been trained to only knock off the non-breakable ornaments--yeah, right....but, I must say we've been fortunate for no breakage.

David telling the Christmas story.

The finished product!

Yes, that's baby Jesus with an angel above Him in our tree. We got the idea from Nanny Boo Boo. We liked it so much, we decided to add Him in our tree, too! How fitting, since it is all about Him!!!

Covered Wagon

These are pics of Hannah's project for her Pioneer Christmas Class that is online today at 11:00 a.m. Daddy and Hannah worked on this covered wagon last Friday night. They enjoyed making this together.