Thanksgiving, Christmas Tree Chopping and more…

 

Boy oh boy are we glad to have electricity again!  And we are so thankful for generators 😀  It seems that ever since Mommy has begun writing this advent e-book, we are being attacked by satan but then wonderfully defended by our Defender 🙂

Right now she is writing about peace, and this week has been full of things like a broken dryer, a broken sump-pump, no electricity, and we thought our washer might be broken (I tried running it on the generator…bad idea!) but thankfully it reset itself.  As crazy as this week has been, God has given us His wonderful peace, which certainly passes all understanding!

I had read Proverbs 16:3  on Monday, and decided that it was a definitely a good idea to ‘commit my works’ to Him, especially as they all seemed to be piling up and I wasn’t sure how to catch up!

 

Though having no real power for 24 hours had it’s setbacks, we actually enjoyed it, and God truly gave us His peace!  I think we all got considerably caught up on things that didn’t take electricity, (such as decorating the house and rearranging our rooms!) and there was no computer to distract us.  Also our sewing machines can’t run on the generator, so we couldn’t sew  (though we were getting a *little* bit worried, since tomorrow is our open house and we have a little more…okay, a lot more…sewing to do!)

So we used less electricity, lit more candles, and I ‘ve heard several times this week from different sisters how glad and thankful  they are that we’re all a family…I quite agree 😀

And did I mention there was no computer to distract us?!  😀  We are thankful for the computer (and like it a lot) but it was nice not to have that pull 😉   I

 

 

Now for the real reason for this post!   Thanksgiving Day we discovered that our sump pump had stopped working, therefore flooding our basement!

Thankfully we have no living space down there, and it’s almost always wet anyway, but we usually don’t have 6-8 inches of water down there all the time!   We like to call it ‘the dungeon’.

 

It was up so high, some of our canned goods were wading…

 

Noah, with his ‘high-water’ pants and rubber boots, helping Daddy 😀

 

Charissa is enjoying part of the dasher to the ice cream maker 😀

 

 

Bekah and Anna found a cute idea on Pinterest so they got to work and made each of us a place setting for the table…

 

Written in Hindi, then in English, since not all of us have memorized what our name looks like in Hindi 😀

 

 

Our Thanksgiving spread was amazing and almost all Gaps legal…we did cheat on a few little things…shhh!  We were stuffed!

 

Our menu was:

Gourmet Potatoes

Broccoli-Cauliflower Casserole

Sweet Potato Casserole (only made with butternut squash)

Bacon Avocado Salad

Ham

Fried Beets

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

 

 

We always seem to like to make as much dessert as we do real food, and this year was no different…

2 Coconut Cream Pies

Pumpkin Pie

Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies

Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars

No-Bake Cookies

Apple Clafoutis

 

We ended up saving the Apple Clafoutis for breakfast the next day, since it’s kind of like a Dutch Apple Baby, and we obviously had more than enough desserts 🙂   Afterwards, several of us did hoedowns…a good way lower your blood sugar and to keep from feeling *too* sleepy!

 

 

Then the day after Thanksgiving, three of us went to JoAnn fabrics for their Black Friday sale, and while we were away, Daddy put up the icicle lights.

 

 

Noah, watching Daddy…

 

He’s a good little helper 😉

 

 

Since our dryer is broke right now (please dryer part, come quickly in the mail!!!) we were hanging out our clothes on the clothesline until it got too cold.  Now we’re taking trips into the little laundromat in town 😀

 

Anna found her sari that Susannah had given her a few years back and relearned how to wrap it…I thought this picture of her hanging laundry in her sari was very cute!

 

 

 

 

Later that day we went Christmas tree shopping, at our favorite Christmas tree place!

 

 

 

We were dismayed to see that they had cleared out a large section of the tree farm…where you see us walking there used to be rows of trees.  As we always like to get the biggest one that will fit into our house, we were hoping they hadn’t chopped down all of the tall trees 😀

 

 

Thankfully, we found our tree!

 

…then we had a silly picture…

 

…then we took off our coats to show just how unseasonably warm it was!

 

Next, we took turns cutting down the tree…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a cute little video of the boys cutting the tree…we had to say ‘push, pull, push, pull’ to help Isaiah get the idea 😀

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzqbZAaDZA0[/youtube]

 

Then the guy-with-the-tractor-and-wagon noticed we had our tree, so they loaded it up and we took a ride back to the front of the farm.

 

 

Daddy and Leah, pulling it over to the machine that shakes out the dry needles.

 

 

Some of the pretty greenery they had for sale

 

 

Our tree was so fat and huge, they had to tie it to a tractor to pull it through the cone to wrap it 😀

 

 

Inside of the pole barn where you pay for the tree, they have free hot cider, and candles and other things you could buy.

 

Another pretty Christmas bundle 🙂

 

On the way home, we stopped by our town’s high school where they recently put up a wind turbine…we don’t see very many of these in this part of Indiana, so it was neat to see one so close to us.

 

When we came back home, we had to try out the newly hung icicle lights 😀

 

Saturday evening we brought the tree inside…Susannah and Leah measured it and we found it was 8 1/2 feet tall.  As we have 9 foot ceilings, this was just perfect 😀  Especially since our angel still had to sit on top!

 

Sunday night we decorated the tree…

 

…and that is always lots of fun 🙂  We pull the dining room bench in and Daddy and Mommy set out all the ornaments in order, then they tell us the story behind each one as they give them to us to hang up.  We like to get a new ornament for each year according to what had happened that year, so we have ornaments for every year Daddy and Mommy have been married 😀

 

This year’s ornament was one we got while at Holland, Michigan 😀

 

This is a rather blurry picture of last year’s ornament, which we got while on our long East trip 🙂

 

 

 

Our angel was given to us by our grandma…the angel’s lights don’t work anymore, but we don’t care, we still like this angel the best 😀

 

 

Another blurry picture, but it gives a good idea of what our living room looks like while we’re decorating it.

 

Susannah and Cassia thought they were posing for the camera…what they didn’t know was that Anna was recording them 😀  I love how Susannah puts on a ‘scary face’ and tells Cassia, “Act scared!”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzGzGwvvbIY[/youtube]

 

 

Noah hanging our ‘house’ ornament…the one we got for the year we bought our lovely old farmhouse ♥  The ornament even has a window seat, just like our house does.

 

Listening to ‘ornament stories’.  Even though we hear them every year, I’m glad we tell them again and again 😀

 

Anna is busily writing her name on our traditional paper airplane.  We sign and date it every year when we put the tree up, then we stick it into the Christmas tree and then sign it again when we take the tree down.

 

It’s getting really full so we might have to start another airplane some year soon!

 

Don’t you love Anna’s ‘earrings’?!

 

It’s almost ‘tradition’ to hang ornaments on our ears and take pictures of it 😀

 

Cassia and Susannah

 

These ornaments were given to us from our neighbors who had visited Israel…there’s twelve of them made from olive wood, telling the Christmas story.

 

 

The finished result…

 

 

It is also tradition to have these double-chocolate-mint cookies every year…and Susannah was a dear and figured out how to make them GAPS legal 😀  Of course the chocolate chips and the Andes mints aren’t legal, but everything else was 😀

 

And we had ice cream left over from Thanksgiving, so we had that with our yummyful cookies 🙂  Stop by tomorrow at our open house for the recipe 😀

 

I’m so thankful for this season!

 

 

 

 

 

p.s. if you think of us, we’d greatly appreciate your prayers as Mommy writes about love and joy in the next couple of weeks 😀  It isn’t a terribly comforting feeling to know that the devil has set his sights on us (he hates God’s name and therefore wouldn’t really want us studying it!) but on the other hand we are comforted to know that “Nothing touches me without my Father’s permission.” Keep a Quiet Heart pg. 135

 

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