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Showing posts from December, 2012

Looking back at 2012

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The 2013 Schoolhouse Review Crew Blog Cruise is starting back with a 2012 in Review theme.  2012 is coming to a close and I am not sorry to see it go.  Here at my house we dubbed it the year of things that broke. I no longer recall the exact order of items only that through out the year things kept falling apart, breaking down or just simply not working anymore, including me! We had a broken dishwasher and a broken kitchen sink. At some point, but thankfully not at the same time, we also had problems with both the washer and the dryer.  Those were earlier in the year.  I do remember the dishwasher and the kitchen sink being worked on around Easter.  We were all in the family room enjoying a movie or something when the futon suddenly decided that it had had enough.  After 15 years it just collapsed.  With all of us sitting on it!  That was not fun.  It was funny later but it was no fun finding myself sitting on the floor! In July  we began to have serious “car trouble”.   One day on

New Year’s Eve: A Junk Food Tradition

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Tomorrow night is New Year’s Eve.  Growing up, my mom always made her cheeseball and she would serve other snack food like cheese, salami, and crackers. I don’t remember if we had a real dinner or not. When my husband and I got married we began the “junk food instead of dinner” tradition on New Year’s Eve.   It didn’t really start though until our 2nd New Year’s.  We had homemade buffalo wings.  I had just learned how to make them!  The following year we added homemade egg rolls to the menu.  We haven’t done those for a long time.  They are fabulous but hard work and four girls in less than 4 years meant giving up some of the harder items. This year’s menu includes a NEW item.  We were introduced to Mexican Dip on Christmas Day and liked it so much that we’re adding it to our Junk Food Tradition.  Other menu items include the now required buffalo wings, home made chex mix,  my mother’s cheeseball (made by my daughter using my mom’s recipe).  We’ll have some jalapeno poppers and maybe

Looking for Christ in Christmas

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As I type this, I feel as though my heart is just going to burst.  15 years ago my husband and I began a journey to find more meaning in our walk with Christ.  We wanted Christmas to be truly focused on Christ.  We began to study and search. We only wanted those customs that pointed to Christ.  We came to the conclusion that Christmas was pagan and that the best way to honor Him would be to STOP celebrating Christmas. This left such a hole in my heart.  I loved Christmas. Christmas was always about the birth of Christ. It wasn’t that we denied the virgin birth.  It wasn’t that we didn’t acknowledge that the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among mankind.  It’s that we thought it was wrong to have Christmas trees and wreaths and all those other “pagan” items. In our defense we were just trying to serve Him with glad and grateful hearts.  He gave us a miracle in Supergirl and we wanted to honor the God of the universe for His love towards us. As each year passed, my heart would gro

Christmas Is NOT over just yet.

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I know for many many people Christmas seems to begin on the evening of Thanksgiving and ends on the evening of Christmas.  If I started celebrating Christmas that early, I’d be way past done with it, too! What amazes me though is that so many people seem to think that the 12 days of Christmas begin 12 days before December 25 and end on December 25.  Nope.  Lots of people do Christmas countdowns (we do!) but the actual 12 days of Christmas begins on December 25 and ends on January 5 and Theophany (Epiphany) is on January 6th. When I was growing up we put the Christmas tree up a week to 10 days before Christmas and it stayed up at least until the Saturday after New Year’s Day.  We didn’t exactly celebrate for 12 days but there was the acknowledgement that this wonderful feast was longer than just 1 day and that it didn’t begin until December 25.  (Though I will point out that liturgically it begins at Vespers, the evening service, on December 24 because liturgical days begin at sun dow

On the Eve of the Feast of Nativity

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I love the Royal Hours service that is given on the morning of Christmas Eve.  In our parish the youth are the choir.  This is from last year.  I’m looking forward to hearing them this morning.   The songs of the day for this service speak from Joseph’s point of view.  He moves from disbelief and anger at Mary for “doing this to him” to Joseph declaring that he is convinced that Mary will give birth to God. Tone 8 Joseph said to the virgin: What has happened to you, O Mary? I am troubled; what can I say to you? Doubt clouds my mind; depart from me! What has happened to you, O Mary? Instead of honor, you bring me shame. Instead of joy, you fill me with grief Men who praised me will blame me. I cannot bear condemnation from every side. I received you, a pure virgin in the sight of the Lord. What is this I now see? The Kontakion (short hymn honor a saint or event) for the day is in tone 3. We’ll sing this repeatedly this morning: Today the virgin comes to the cave Where she will giv

O is for Ordinary

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Here we are just two days before Christmas,  We’re at letter O for the Blogging Through The Alphabet.  Being so close to Christmas it would make sense to do something like O is for Ornaments and I could very easily do a whole post about ornaments.  But I found a bunch of “ordinary” pictures.  Pictures of us doing boring ordinary things.  Here are just a few.     Sleeping.  Something we do everyday.  Not necessarily daily on the couch though.         Yard work. Another ordinary activity. This was taken in the spring after the major ice storm of January 2012           School work.  Boring.  But it’s something ordinary that we do nearly everyday.           More school work.  Doing school with the cat on the lap is a pretty ordinary event for us.               I wish that goofing off during school wasn’t an ordinary activity.  I wish that it didn’t happen so frequently with so much regularity.       It’s the ordinary moments of life that truly make lif

Christmas Preparations

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This week we’ve set aside school to focus on preparing for the Christmas Season celebrations.  As I’ve mentioned before, we celebrate the 12 days.  Christmas Eve becomes ripe with anticipation and December 25th marks the Feast of the Nativity of Lord and Savior.  That feasting will continue through Jan 6th.  Ok ok.  There’ll be a short break from the feasting on January 5th for the preparation for the great feast of Theophany. It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of these preparations.  I’ve got Christmas crafts/gifts to complete, cookies to bake, menus to plan, and cleaning to do.  I also have to get the Christmas cards sent, and the presents wrapped. This week I’m making an effort to include a slow-down-and-enjoy-the-season memory making activity each day.  I don’t want the holidays to be so busy that we’re stressed out.  And I don’t want us to be so busy with preparations and cleaning that we forgot *why* we are celebrating.  From the last line of one of the Kontak

12-12-12

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I know today is NOT 12-12-12.  That awesome cool date was LAST week.  (Wednesday to be specific) Though I wanted to post, I just couldn’t squeeze it in that day because I was working fast and furiously trying to get home school records in order for my oldest to get her college application in before the December deadline. Because I just knew I wasn’t going to get my wonderful 12-12-12 post done I quickly grabbed the children and snapped a picture so I would have a RECORD of some type of this momentously cool date. 12-12-12 I really wanted a picture that captured the moment and the above picture was taken at 12 minutes after 12 O’clock on 12-12-12 or it was taken at 12:12 on 12/12/12.   What were you doing at 12:12 on 12-12-12? Oh and yes the oldest did get her college application finished.  I did get a transcript made and a senior year course schedule.  Now we wait and see if she if’s accepted.

N is for Nativity

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The “Christmas Season” is upon us.  I put “Christmas Season” is quotation marks because Christmas begins on December 25 and ends on January 5th, the eve of Theophany.   We celebrate the 12 days of Christmas here. Right now as I type this we’re deep into Advent.  Advent means “coming”.  Advent is the time of preparing for the coming of the Lord.  We’re waiting and preparing for Emmanuel.   In the Orthodox Church it is known as “little lent”.   Great Lent is the time of preparation for the joyous Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior. I love advent.  I love the idea of preparing my heart to receive this great gift from God: the gift of Himself: God made flesh.  One thing that we’ve done in the past is an advent chain.  This chain has 40 links and each link contains a bible passage that points to the coming of the Lord.   Weeks are noted by alternating red and green rings.  Feast days are noted by purple links and the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior is white. This year we ar

M is for Music

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For many years my girls have been taking piano lessons.  That means that I grew very accustomed to hearing the (digital) piano played frequently throughout the day.  I’ve even found that I would dream about the piano playing or have a piece of music running through my mind. I don’t always enjoy listening to the scales and technique practice, nor do I find it pleasurable to hear them first begin a new and more difficult piece but love hearing the progress they’ve made over the years and it brings a smile to my face when one of them chooses to try her hand at improvising or composing. Several weeks ago our believed digital Piano, a Technic, began to die.  First it was one broken  key.  A pain but sort of workable.  Then all the D’s and F flats above middle c only wanted to work part time.  It became a gamble; would they have sound this morning or not.  If that wasn’t bad enough, several more keys decided to be uncooperative.  If you pressed ONE key, you got the sound of a chord.  At t