Remembering Our 2009

From All of Us

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Christmas gift suggestions:

To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.

- Oren Arnold

American editor and free-lance writer (1900-1980)

So Surreal

surreal

resembling a dream

unreal

dreamlike

not actually such

being or seeming fanciful or imaginary

I am sitting in a coffee shop. It is Christmas time. Outside the window just beside me, snow is falling. Our children are miles away at their grandparents' home. My husband is just across the table, our feet almost touching. Our eleventh anniversary just a day away; love still so strong. Chatter all around from busy coffee drinkers and socialites. Homeschool planning started and half finished. Jasmine tea in a delightful green cup just inches away from my typing hands. Warm and delicious meal still warming my tummy from a lunch date in the heart of Chapel Hill, our college town. Christmas shopping awaiting us. This is surreal.

The odd silence within our home. The uninterrupted conversation. The quietness. The ease. It has taken a bit to be relaxed enough to enjoy the stillness. Our children fill my life with so much joy. With that joy comes childlike chatter and chaos. Life can be nonstop. Taking a deep breath is sometimes difficult. As taxing as those nonstop days are, I love them. Being able to stop, breathe and evaluate allows me to truly appreciate the richness and fullness of my dreamlike life.

As of Late

Our family has been quite busy lately as we have been enjoying this Christmas season. By the way, the A-door-able Advent Calendar is great, but it does take a lot of effort and time. It has been fun, but things like my blog and our laundry have kind of taken a back seat.

We have been enjoying park play dates, decorating, making crafts, homeschooling, playing lots of Christmas music, going to special church activities, baking and traveling. Here are a few pictures from the past week.

One of our advent activities was late night hot chocolate by the fire. That was fun and cozy. Yes, just call us rebel parents serving up chocolate to our kids after 8pm. Side note, we did catch a couple jumping on their beds just before sleep time. Bet you can figure which two. :)

In Science we studied Snails. We thought we would have a little snail race to see whose snail finished first. Notice that the first picture was taken outside. The little snails didn't really like all the wind that day, so we had to move them in. This is a come back later activity. If you didn't know, they are pretty slow. :) Madelyn's snail finished first. She was delighted.

Just clowning.

One of our advent activities was craft night. We decorated green felt Christmas trees and hung them up in our dining room. I got the idea from Family Fun magazine.

Here the kids are making sugar cookies. I finally found a great recipe that works well with our egg substitute. I packed my patience for this. All kids had flour up to their elbows. They loved it though. I just surrendered to the mess and it was much more enjoyable. Kalen was my buddy. He stuck with me through it all, even clean up.

Nutcracker

To celebrate Jan's December birthday, the Morrison girls went to the Nutcracker put on by the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. It was amazing. I have decided that of all the Nutcracker performances I have seen, I always walk away thinking that the first few scenes are my favorite. You know, when the families gather together for the party around the tree. All the people are dressed differently, the music is great, and there is so much warmth and delight.

Anna, Jan and Madelyn

Shanda and Madelyn

The kids helped their Nana blow out her birthday candles.

A-door-able Advent Calendar

I got a great idea from my Family Fun magazine for December. Someone came up with this super cute way to create your own advent calendar. I did some planning and actually was able to do it myself. I took a picture of mine and it didn't come out so well. I will let you just look above at the one I found in the magazine.

Basically, you come up with 25 days worth of family activities to build the children's anticipation during this season of advent. It wasn't hard for me to brainstorm fun activities our kids would enjoy. Some of the ideas I wrote behind the windows or doors were- let's decorate our Christmas tree, game night, let's go to a park, let's make cookies, we are going out to eat tonight, let's go rollerskating, Lego night, and the list goes on.

Thursday morning, December 3rd, the kids opened that particular day's window and found these words camp out in the living room. They were super excited and began their chatter about sleeping bags and such. Here are a few photos. It was so cute and they had a ball.

I let them watch Polar Express, a holiday favorite, before bedtime.

Here they all are just after being tucked in the first time. Notice I put first time.

Madelyn and Julian were such buddies that night.

Guess who wasn't tired.

You can't see his face, but this is Kalen. He had no problems conking out after a night of fun. He passes out when his head hits the pillow. He always gives 150% of himself to his day.

Girl Time

I spent the day with Torie, Laurie and Gari Leigh today. We picked up right off where we left off. We laughed and chatted for hours. Old friends can be so much fun!

Happiness

Fair Trade Shopping

I received a great article today via Sojourners. The article is about buying fair trade this Christmas. The writer, Julie Clawson, writes about a campaign going on by Trade As One. Check it out at tradeasone.com. Down below I have given you some of what I read. Definitely take the time to watch this clip from You Tube. It will only take 3 minutes and will surely help you and I make a difference this season in our own lives, as well as precious lives in far away countries. Enjoy looking through the different links I have provided. I hope you find one you can shop from during this season of giving.

Fair Trade Christmas Lists and Links
by Julie Clawson
So the stores are playing Christmas music and down here in Texas the highs are only the 70s and 80s, so the holiday season must be upon us. But as we gear up for the celebrations, the spiritual reflections, and the traditions, now is a good time to start deliberately planning how we can make this Christmas a just Christmas. In other words, how can we subvert systems of oppression and exploitation through our holiday habits. And while I think some of those habits might need to be reevaluated, some of them are beautiful and hold special meaning. So while I am wary of over-consumption, we still practice the giving of gifts in my family. I just do my best to therefore try to make my consumption ethical.
So I’m excited by Trade As One’s campaign this holiday season to encourage all of us to buy Fair Trade gifts this Christmas. We turn our traditions into a way to help and love others through such purchases. And if enough of us do it, we can make a big difference. They write:
Think about this: Just One Fair Trade purchase from every American churchgoer this Christmas would lift one million families out of abusive poverty for one whole year. Let’s make sure that when gifts are given, they speak of the sort of world that Jesus came to show us — one where the last is first, where the poor are included, the sick are healed, and the captive is set free.
Fantastic idea. And they created this great video to help get the message out there.

I’ve listed some of my favorite sites below. But all it takes is just a little tweak to our holiday habits this Christmas to help show love to people around the world.
Clothing and Accessories
Be The Change Elements
Earth Creations
Ecoland
Fair Indigo
Greenheart
Indigenous Designs
Mata Traders
No Sweat Apparel
Rawganique
Simple Shoes
Tinctoria Designs
Tom’s Shoes
Food, Coffee, and Gifts
Cafe Justo
Equal Exchange
Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee
Natural Candy Store
SERRV
Taraluna
Ten Thousand Villages (Anna's favorite)
Trade As One
World of Good
Other
Fair Trade Sports
Reusable Bags

Giving Thanks With Family

We spent our Thanksgiving holiday traveling around to see our extended family. We had a great time. Here are just a few of our special moments captured.

This is the Morrison clan just before heading to see the Festival of Lights at Tanglewood.

Jerry rented a coverd wagon to take a hayride through the lights. We made some memories doing this. The kids really enjoyed seeing all the festive lights.

All snug with Scott on the hayride.

Scott and Jerry in the kitchen on Thanksgiving day.

Here are two of our helpers. Kalen and Maddie buttered our bread for us.

Julian chopped up the celery for us for our stuffing. He was a great help and fun to have in the kitchen.

Here's Brayden after he finally got the candy cane he was begging for. He had not had them before. Needless to say, he is a big fan of candy canes.

Jan and Shanda busy in the kitchen.

Loving being in Jan's kitchen.

We went over to Ryan and Stephanie's house to celebrate Thanksgiving with my Dad, Sally, and my brother and his family.

My niece, Anna Kristin with her dog, Toby, and Madelyn

Anna Kristin, Maddie, Kalen, Julian, Brayden and Grayson

Brayden dressed as Wolverine at Ry and Steph's.

Here I am with my Grandma at my mom's house.

Anna Kristin and Kalen enjoyed playing Nintendo DS together.

Scott playing ball with Brady at my mom's house.

Our Tree of Thanks

The kids and I made this lovely tree of thanks out of brown paper grocery bags and construction paper. We sat around one day after lunch making a list of various things and people we were thankful. I attempted making various kinds of leaves (this is really hard to do) and then I wrote out those things and people that we are thankful. We were not able to get all the things we were thankful for on leaves (I was tired of making leaves). We took turns attaching the leaves to our tree. Those were sweet moments.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. I hope your holiday is sweet and full of warmth.