Christmas Vacation 2013:

 Our Week at Home

 

A whole week at home without any specific places to go and no school assignments

 seems to stretch out into forever with great promises of leisure

along with the ability to start and finish some projects.

 

The sad reality is that the week passes way too quickly.

Some of the projects get started but not finished.

The "to-do" list is not all checked off.

Unplanned events are thrown into the mix of life.

 

Yet, every so often, we need the change-up:

a break from the schedule, time to sleep in, release from the daily routine,

so that we can regenerate and enjoy our families in a little different capacity.

 

 

 

She was finally able to open her newest Lego Friends set
(courtesy of her Uncle Matt who thinks the whole "Friends" line is sacrilegious).

Of course, the brothers had to help her build it.

 

My to-do list included cleaning out and rearranging our small storage building.

I was able to pull a box of chapter books off a shelf and give them to Tiana.

To make them fit on her bookshelf, we had to go through and take out

a whole bunch of books and box them up.

It was a good time to clean out the books she had outgrown.

 

During this time, the guys were working on the roof structure

they are building over the deck.

 

Such fun staining all that wood.

 

 

Then it was on to the roofing panels.

 

In the midst of all this,

we found out that our upright freezer had been leaking

while we were gone on vacation and had left a nice mess on our

laundry room floor.  Of course it had also made a mess under the metal filing cabinet.

So, now we get to replace the flooring.

But, you know how one thing leads to another...

if we're replacing the floor, we might as well paint.

If we are painting, then we will have to move out the washer and dryer

and since they are old we should probably replace them.

While we are at it, we will put in new cabinets where the freezer used to sit.

We might as well replace the hall bathroom flooring to match the laundry room.

And it goes on and on much faster than our bank account can handle.

 

 

Bethany spent a few days taking out Tiana's hair extensions

by doing a little at a time so that neither of them became too tired of the process.

On Saturday, there were just a dozen braids left along the nape of Tiana's neck

when she decided to be helpful and cut them off for Bethany.

What Tiana did not understand was Bethany cut off the synthetic hair and

left the natural hair attached to her head.

Tiana lopped it all off.

Four years of growth was now gone.

Sigh.

In retrospect, the short hair in the back is much easier to deal with than

short hair in the front or on one side. 

We can work around this problem and let it regrow without having

to cut off the rest of her slow growing hair.

 

To round off the week,

I got older.

 

But, I was treated very well

and I am alive, healthy, and surrounded by those I love

so I will not complain.

 

 

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Tiana loves to use window markers to decorate for holidays.

It wasn't until after Christmas that I really read what she had written

on one of the windows.

"Gloly to God in the histe thow men pease on earth!"

(Glory to God in the highest, through men peace on earth)

 

I chuckled throughout the day over her spelling and interpretation.

Then I got to thinking about the last part of her sentence:

through men peace on earth.

Maybe that is why we don't have peace on earth.

It is always humans trying to forge and force peace through human methods.

Real peace only comes from God through Christ

and it is not until everyone recognizes this and lives by Christ's

principles that we can truly have peace on earth.

 

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I

give to you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. 

John 14:27