We’ve had a lot of excitement here with winding down our fall semester of homeschool and getting ready for Christmas, after recovering from our Thanksgiving vacation in Utah. We had an “end of semester recital” so to speak, for our homeschool group. My youngest earned a foam sword for completing his requirements for Mastering Knighthood. The next two kids in the line-up above him each earned a sword for Sword of Freedom.

This cute girl isn’t my daughter getting her sword but she’s showing an eager reaction so I’m putting her picture here.

My husband and four of my boys, all the four who currently live at home, were in a Christmas Nativity program sponsored by the local congregations of our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a a dream come true for me. I’ve always wanted to sing with my family in some kind of Nativity program, and this fit the bill. In years past I have felt too swamped with babies or little kids, or in the case of last year, preparing for my daughter’s wedding. This year found me completely unencumbered, for the most part (when is a mom and grandma completely unencumbered? LOL!) so I went to all the practices. We got to sing a bunch of traditional Christmas carols, plus a  delightful new Christmas song, “Beautiful Bethlehem Morning.”  The best part was singing Handel’s Hallelujah chorus. I’ve always wanted to do this but with little kids it was never the right season of life to do it. Now it finally is with my baby being 9. I practiced with the video below for my alto part.

Apparently I didn’t watch and practice early enough, as the day before the performance I realized I had been singing my part wrong, singing the soprano part and not the alto. Oops. Those sopranos are so strong I was matching their part instead of the altos around me! Next year will be better! The top picture of this post is the best photographic record I have of the event. The 14 year old refused to be with us in the photo, choosing selfies that his friends took instead of with us; the 9 year old didn’t want to put his costume back on for the photo (it was taken after the event); and the 12 year old girl refused to even sing with us or even watch the event, and stayed home. That’s the reality of a large family. I’m discovering more and more how personalities in the same family can be so different.

This is from our religious congregation’s Christmas dinner party. I love how joyful the boy in the middle is singing! My 9 year old played his big sister’s tactic and refused to join in the singing.

In the midst of our practicing and my holiday prep I’m also getting ready for the semester back at our commonwealth, to discuss Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis the first week back in January, with a group of  teens for a LEMI Scholar Project about worldviews called Quest 3 . I’ve decided it’s the perfect Christmas classic for the postmodern world. I hadn’t read it yet, even though I’ve heard lots of people talk about it. I found this cool YouTube channel called C.S. Lewis Doodles. It shows someone “sketchnoting” the text while someone reads it aloud. It’s so cool! I love watching these while I do holiday baking and exercising. Lewis’ words apply even more so today than when he wrote them.

Cupcakes at the dinner party! I am so proud of myself for abstaining! Instead I ate my healthful chocolate!

Here’s the link to the whole playlist. It really is wonderful to hear C.S. Lewis’ words with visual depictions being sketched out. It helps me understand the words better. I love knowing that we have a Savior to redeem us from our sins and our disobedience to moral law. Thank you C.S. Lewis for explaining Christianity so well!