Another song in the book I found thrifting, which I blogged about here, is the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Handel was truly inspired to write it. Oh how I love this music. It is just glorious! I played it this morning on the piano to wake up my family to get ready for church. What glorious music it is. The Tabernacle Choir of Temple Square had Handel’s story of writing the music for the theme of its 2015 Christmas concert. Watch below. I add my testimony to that born by this music, that Christ was born to us to be our Messiah, our Counselor, our Prince of Peace.
I found this darling book pictured above at a thrift store last winter. For only $4! It’s so lovely. A pre-Christmas gift! God knew I wanted the sheet music for some Christmas songs that I don’t already have in the Reader’s Digest Merry Christmas Songbook, which I got for my 16th birthday, like Silver Bells and Mary’s Lullaby. Both those songs are in this book! It is full of songs, stories, poems, and suggested family tradition activities. This book is also a countdown to Christmas, an advent, to start on December 1. So, each night when we light a candle from our Immanuel Wreath and talk about that name of Christ, we read a story if there’s one, for that day, from this book. The book also has a craft or recipe for each day but I never do those, LOL, because I just don’t have the time. I’m just not in a season of life to do a lot of crafts and recipes. I got it for the songs and the stories. It was only this past week when I pulled it out to use when lighting the wreath’s candle that I noticed “Hey this book has cool conversation starter/ journaling questions!” Maybe one of these days I will start using them. God knows that I love good discussion/journal questions. (I have a bunch curated here, thanks to Jennifer Flanders of flandersfamily.info.) I wish I had noticed the ones in this book sooner and started using them on December 1. I think it would be so meaningful to have a special Christmas Family Conversations Journal where I ask these same questions every year to my children, via text to the ones out of the nest, and via dinnertime, for the ones still at home, and recorded their answers in that dedicated Journal. How cool would that be, to go back and see how their answers change. I guess it’s never too late to start. Yes indeed, this beautiful book is one of my many pre-Christmas gifts that I’ve been enjoying. Sometimes I go to the thrift store, and come out with nothing, and sometimes, like when I bought this book, I go in, and there’s this amazing item that is just shouting out to me to pick it up and buy it, figuratively saying, “God put me in your path for you to buy me and take home and use. Here you go, enjoy!” Such was the case with that book, as well as this other book shown below. I also found it thrifting, and it’s another Christmas Advent book. If we have time, I read the story for the night from this book too. It focuses on the family tree of Jesus with a Biblical story each night telling of one person from the family tree of Jesus.
Image Credit: goodreads.com
Last week my husband and I went car shopping again. Our marriage has witnessed 9 cars being totaled in accidents, thus warranting a replacement, so we have a lot of car shopping experience. (Names of the guilty are being kept secret, LOL.) I hope we don’t have to do this again for a long, long time. As we drove to a look at a car, I realized the seller lives within three miles or so of where I lived from ages 5-8. So, when we borrowed the car to test drive it, we drove past my childhood home. It looked different but the same. It’s hard to describe. It was literally a trip down memory lane. Memories were flooding back. Remember Big Wheels? I could see me at 5 years old riding a Big Wheel down the hill, on the sidewalk, into my driveway, then walking up the hill to start over. I can still name at least half a dozen family names from this neighborhood. I just wonder where all these families are now. Do any of them still live there? I guess that is what Facebook is for. Everything is so much smaller than it used to be. Anyway, when we were driving back to the owner’s home, I was driving and couldn’t get the brakes to work. It was scary! I was putting my foot on the brake, but the car wasn’t stopping. I ran a red light and saw a car coming about to hit us. Fortunately, and I believe it was angels helping, I was guided with enough presence of mind to swerve and miss the car. Whew!!! I am so grateful!!! Needless to say, we didn’t buy that car! We bought a different car later that day. Yay!!! I just got an hour of time back each day, from not having to drive and pick my husband up from the train station each day, which allowed me to have a car to do mom errands. So that’s another pre-Christmas miracle for the week, that I was saved from a major car accident. I am feeling so blessed!
Our poor totaled car in the car graveyard after the car accident. I feel blessed that we found the same make, model, and color, but younger and fewer miles, with our insurance money.
Then it just so happened that one of my brothers, who lives in Virginia currently, but often lives overseas like in Korea or China, happened to fly into town Sunday morning. This was positively providential! Only God knew how to do this, and He arranged it. Sunday night, after celebrating my mom’s birthday with a dinner at my sister’s home, we took my brother to a fireside. We went to hear the couple whose story is told in this book below. In the book, the couple tell their story about escaping from Communist North Korea.
My brother served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in South Korea so I knew he would enjoy hearing this couple share. What are the chances that he would come when I just happened to have an invite from my friend Angie Law to come to this fireside? He only comes to visit once, sometimes twice a year, and it just happened to be this time. Only God knew these details ahead of time and could arrange it so perfectly. So that’s another pre-Christmas miracle.
The Kims escaped from North Korea, two years apart. The husband escaped in 2009, the wife in 2011. Their story is amazing! They now live in Utah. They say they are so grateful for hot water, electricity, and all these material blessings they have here in the States, 24/7. Just hearing them speak makes me feel so grateful too for all of my material and spiritual blessings. Now I want to read their book! They have seen the atrocities of living under a Communist government. Mr. Kim said that when he was a child, his neighbors got taken away by the police for having church in their home. This was when Mr. Kim first learned about God, when his boss told him why the neighbors were taken away. The idea of a God percolated in his brain for months. He started believing in God and praying, asking for help that his wife would be able to escape as he did. There’s a lot more to their story so you will have to go buy the book like I’m going to. I’m just so grateful for the Kims and other people like them who have set such a great example of following God’s light.
Those are a few pre-Christmas gifts/miracles I’ve enjoyed lately. I’d love to hear of any you’ve received. Please comment in the comments section below.
I’m super excited to share with you this idea from my married daughter. She came up with the above Christmas Advent Candle Set that is safe to use around little children. It’s a wonderful alternative for the Immanuel Wreath that I use, as shown below.
This Immanuel Wreath from David Butler and Emily Belle Freeman has the names of Christ printed around the base, one for each hole, and one hole each for the first 25 days of December. While indeed lovely, it is definitely a fire hazard! I don’t think I would use it if I had under-5s around. I would be afraid to even turn my head!
The paper star lanterns act as candle holders, although her photo doesn’t show any candles inside the lanterns yet. Then she uses salt dough and battery-operated tea candles. The video showing how to make the paper stars is below. I asked her why she uses 5 paper star lanterns instead of 4, like many traditional advent candle holders do. This is what she said:
“It was just random. It was how many lanterns I ended up with. But it was also nice that 5 divides into 25 so that the spaces between them are even. I’d like to do the liturgical advent with 3 purples and 1 pink candles on Sundays someday. I also wanted more than 4 lanterns to get closer to a rainbow effect.”
I love having a candle advent! We light the day’s candle during dinner, put the little card with the name and scripture next to the candle, and then read aloud the scripture that goes with the name of Christ. Then on Christmas Eve we light all of them! (We do two on Christmas Eve.) On Christmas Eve, I invite family members to talk about what name of Christ has resonated the most with each of them lately. This activity helps our Christmas be so Christ-centered. I love it.
You can get the names of Christ download from Emily and David over here. After we read aloud the scripture we also talk about how we see Christ in that name/role. Then I read aloud a Christmas story from one of my many collections of stories I’ve gathered over the years. (You can get some Christmas stories from my Family Devotionals ebook over here, in the December section, under the stories heading.)
If you want more family Christmas tradition ideas, go here to my new family traditions site, and scroll down under the “December” heading to the section that says, “Activities: About Hanukkah and Christmas.” I hope you have a Merry Christ-centered Christmas!
If you want a handy little PDF with some Christmas picture book titles to refer to for shopping or using your local public library’s online catalog, here you go! I have created one. It’s new, free, and it’s over here! Use it to start or continue a family tradition of reading aloud at least one Christmas picture book a day, such as with the Picture Book Advent I talk about here.
I do have my comprehensive list of Christmas picture books over here on my family traditions and read-aloud site, but that page doesn’t show images of the book covers. This ebook does, however, it doesn’t list all the books over on my new site. So, check back to my family read-aloud site often as I am constantly updating it. I hope you enjoy these books! Don’t feel obligated to read all of them! I know it’s a huge list. Also, feel free to keep reading picture books in and after Christmas, especially January and February. I do! They add to my joy the whole winter and year through!
This past week was sooo wonderful! I had two little pre-Christmas miracles. These were little acknowledgements like winks from God that He is watching over me, responding to me, and showing that He cares for me because He loves me.
First, I had been racking my brain for over a week trying to remember the name of a song I played four years ago to accompany the children of my church congregation singing at a Christmas party. I just could not remember it, neither the title nor the composer of the song. I was so sad because it is such a joyful song and I didn’t want to miss playing it this year. At one point I had the sheet music for it but after my move from AZ who knows where that ended up. I even Googled for it using what search terms I could remember: “song about baby Jesus by Canadian woman”. No luck! In case you don’t know, Google does NOT know everything! I hate to break it to you, LOL. So, I’m driving on one of my many “mom errands” and I had just parked the car and was about to get out. From out of nowhere, this small voice in my head said to me, “The name is Maren Ord.” What?! Wait, yes, that’s it!!!” I thought. “That’s the name of the Canadian woman who wrote the song about Baby Jesus! Thank you God!!!” A quick search with that name turned up the song. It’s called “Born to Be a King.” Now I can play it every day for this Christmas season! Yay!!! It’s so beautiful! I present the sheet music and music video of it to you below! You’re welcome!
Here’s the sheet music on Maren’s site. Scroll down to the middle and click on “Born to Be a King (Sheet Music)” under “Resources.”
The making of this beautiful music was a miracle in itself. Maren says, on the site “Writing this song was one of those times when you don’t feel like it’s you writing. After some prayer and reflection the song came while I was on one of my evening walks. I hurried home and spent the rest of the night writing this song. The next day I added the descant, and that is when it felt complete.” Thank you God for inspiring Maren to write such a beautiful song.
The second miracle is that I found a romantic Christmas movie involving marriage that is clean, Christ-promoting, and FUNNY! Dear husband and I watched it for date night recently. It was good to laugh so hard. Read about that here! I am excited to watch all the movies made by the same actor/producer/director for all our December date nights.
P.S. If you want lots more links to unusual Christmas songs, get my Family Devotionals Ebook here. These are not your usual Christmas carols. They are songs that have appeared in the magazines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1971. I’m in the process of printing them collecting them in a three-ring binder that I keep at my piano. Every morning or night I play one or two on the piano as a signal to my children that my husband and I want them to gather for family prayer. They are just all so lovely, I enjoy them so much.
At last, I have found the cinematic equivalent of a chartreuse flying unicorn! I have found a Christmas romance movie involving marriage that is funny, clean, and on top of all that, it is religious! It’s a pre-Christmas miracle! If you’ve read my blog for long, you know I have expressed the wish to find a movie about married love that is positive and clean. They are hard to find, because they usually either show an extra-marital affair, and/or denigrate marriage by showing it as a tragedy that the partners are trapped in.
Since I expressed that desire to find a romantic movie about marriage years ago on my blog, I have found a few, but this one is the BEST, because it soooo funny, and it promotes the Christ aspect of Christmas, not just Santa Claus. This is better than any Christmas Hallmark movie! Those movies are fun, but the cheese is so abundant I feel like I’ve been digging through a block of Brie by the time the movie is over. Sans the cheese, this movie has so many laugh-out loud moments, such that I was so grateful to have stumbled upon it for my date night with my husband this past week. I love the big jovial family energy that exudes around the Christmas Eve Dinner table. It just makes me want to be Greek! The trailer is below and the full movie is at the bottom of this post.
The name of it is Christmas with the Karountzoses. It’s about a guy with Greek ancestry who learns to appreciate his marriage, family, crazy relatives, and Christ, a lot more than he did at the beginning of the story. I give it 5 out of 5 stars. The acting was great, the theme was wonderful, it’s well written, and it’s totally clean. I felt the Holy Spirit as it mentioned Christ’s sacrifice for us. Unlike Hallmark Christmas movies, which I do enjoy, the cheese factor is limited, and I couldn’t predict the plotline, like I can with Hallmark movies because they are soooo forumulaic.
It’s free on YouTube. The star of the show, Robert Kranz, wrote it and directed it as well. It looks like he has started a company to produce lots of wholesome clean movies. See his message above. Thank you Mr. Kranz for such a wonderful movie! What a gift you have given!
Happy Birthday to children’s picture book author Jan Brett! She was born on this day in 1949. If you have my calendar celebrating picture books, you will see I take note of her birthday today. (You can buy the calendar here.) Jan is one of my favorite illustrators of children’s picture books. As a talented artist, she has mastered the art of creating lusciously drawn, sumptuous Christmas picture books.
Image Credit: goodreads.com
Here is a fun video with Jan Brett, talking about the story behind illustrating her picture book with the text of C. Clement Moore’s ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. She used Stockbridge, MA, Norman Rockwell’s town, as the model for the town she draws in the book.
If you want more suggestions for Christmas picture books, check out my compilation here.
Here’s a great new family tradition for Christmas to encourage Christ-like service and love. Get the above book by buying it or borrowing it from your local public library. If your local public library doesn’t have it, ask your librarian to get it through interlibrary loan. Start now so you can have it before Christmas is over and participate in the activity that it involves.
This book tells the story of a boy named Sam. He notices a sparkly box on the mantel in the days leading up to Christmas. On Christmas Day, his family opens up the box. Inside it are slips of paper, upon which are written acts of service his family did throughout the preceding weeks. His parents tell him that these acts of service are his family’s gift to Jesus. The book even comes with a Sparkle Box so you can start your own tradition right away.
What a great idea! I can see how fun it would be, after all the gifts are open, to open the Sparkle Box and one by one review the acts of service your family performed and talk about them, to end the gift-opening spree focusing on following Christ. This conversation could lead to more talking about how service received or rendered changed the course of one’s day or even life.
I started this tradition last year but I added a twist. Every night as we gathered for family prayers, I asked the family to share something that happened to them that day where they felt touched by someone serving them or some time in the day where they felt the sweet love of God. Some people might have a hard time noticing that, so you might use different language, by saying something like, “When did you feel some sparkle in your life today? Who added sparkle to your life? How did you add sparkle to someone else’s life?” Then write those comments down, put them in the box, and review on Christmas Day. To emphasize the sweetness of God’s love touching people’s lives you could give each person something sweet like a cookie or a piece of fruit as you talk, especially if the neighbors dropped by a holiday treat that day.
(Hint: If you can’t find the book you could just tell the basic story as I’ve shared above and get a gold-colored box from a craft store like Hobby Lobby.)
For more Christmas family tradition ideas, see my other website here, and scroll down to the heading that says, “Activities: About Hannukah and Christmas.”
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Colorado! After having Thanksgiving in Utah for three years in a year, sometimes with my out-of-the-nest children, some of my siblings, my husband’s mom, and my parents and sometimes not with some of them, because of the stupid plandemic in 2020, I decided it was time for a change. So, we went to Colorado to have Thanksgiving with my husband’s brother and sister, and their families. It was so wonderful! It was full of lots of family time and games (see at the bottom of the post what we played). I didn’t get the above picture book from the public library to read for our Morning Basket time before we left, so I read it aloud on the way home from CO. (I remember the first time years ago I realized I could read aloud to my children in the car while my husband was driving. What a revelation! The voice in the car talking to them doesn’t always have to be from an electronic audiobook.)
This book is so wonderful because it tells the Thanksgiving story in a way we probably haven’t heard, that of the perspective of John Howland. John was on the Mayflower as an indentured servant to William Carver. Some little things happened on the voyage add up to get him to America. First, the fact that the Pilgrims had an extra screw so they could fix the broken beam on their ship on the voyage. Next was the fact that when John was tossed overboard by a huge wave, and almost drowned, some other people happened to be on the deck who saw it happen. So, they threw a rope overboard so he could grab it. See the book cover image above. As John was underwater, drowning, he felt like giving in to the overwhelming desire to close his eyes and fall asleep, in other words, die. Then John heard a voice, sounding like his mother’s, to stay awake and not give in to sleep. Just as he opened his eyes, lightning struck over the water above his head. That flash of lightning allowed him to see the rope that his friends had thrown overboard. He was able to see it well enough to grab it and be pulled overboard. How providential!
President M. Russell Ballard gave a talk about this very incident that I love. You can go here to watch it. The John Howland incident is mentioned at about the 7:25 mark.
Reading this story of John Howland, who happens to be my many-greats grandfather, has caused me to reflect on the hand of God in my life.
Here are some little things lately where I’ve seen the hand of God working in my life:
-When October started this past fall I found myself wanting a new autumn wreath to hang on my door. I kind of have one if I go dig deep in my basement and find the old wire from I have that is heart-shaped from a wedding gift I received years ago, and then wrap leaf garlands all around it. But I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t say anything about this to anyone, and then one morning I awoke to see this beautiful wreath on the dining room table with a loving note from my BYU-attending son. He had made it as an activity for a date and decided to give it to me. I was so thrilled!
-Just last Saturday, after our Thanksgiving stay, as we were sitting in the car in the driveway of the home of my in-laws’ in CO, about to leave, my sister-in-law came out to the side of the car holding up my coat. She asked, “Is this any of yours?” I was so grateful she had found it! My husband had it hanging on the handle of my suitcase, sitting by the door to load to the car. My daughter loaded my suitcase and hung my coat on the coat rack, thinking I would come and get it to wear. My plan had been to get it out of the back of the car much later in the day as it neared nighttime when I’d be a lot colder in the car and when taking bathroom breaks at gas stations. I’m so grateful that my sister-in-law found it and brought it to me! I would have been so cold. We live over 8 hours apart and it would have been a hassle for her to mail it to me.
-For over a year, I prayed that my married daughter would move to live close to us with her husband and my two grandchildren. I never mentioned a word of this to them. My prayer was answered this past summer when they moved to live 25 minutes away from me. Now we can see them often and play with them!
-I decided I wanted some new casual, stylish boots that are more up-to-date than the ones I already have. I know it’s a silly thing. I don’t think I even prayed and asked for them, I just started looking for them when thrifting. Lo and behold, I found some about a month ago. They are perfect! They are a little big but that makes it easy to wear with double or triple layers of socks should I ever want to do that on extra frosty outings. The brown color harmonizes with my tan or navy clothes, and the black soles make them compatible when I wear black pants or skirts. I also found some neutral flats, the loafers in the photo below (I can’t decide if they are pink or beige?) and some cute hot pink shoes!
-When I was having a hard time with a certain person, because of disagreements, God sent me to a store that I frequent about once or twice a month. I had almost gone to the store the night before but decided to delay it to the next day. I went during the noon hour, which I almost delayed again to evening but decided it would be better to go in the middle of the day. I just “happened” to see a friend there who I haven’t seen in over 20 years! The conversation easily flowed to the subject of the trouble I had been having with this person. She gave me some great counsel, which I applied to the relationship. Now the relationship is so much better to the point that this person gave me two birthday presents this past year! I’m so grateful that God led me to this friend and her counsel!
-I had a meeting to attend for a non-profit-organization I’m involved with. The organization has different chapters in the area. Two chapters were having a meeting the same Tuesday night, one at 6:30 and one at 7:30. I really wanted to go to the 7:30 meeting because that’s the one that my close friend attends, but the 6:30 meeting would make it a lot easier for me to take my daughter to tae kwon do lessons and the pick her up. I prayed silently as I went about my business and asked that I would do what’s best. I decided to go to the 6:30 meeting because that would take less time and gas, even though I wouldn’t see my friend. In the end, it turned out that my friend forgot to go to the 7:30 meeting. So then I didn’t feel bad that I missed the 7:30 meeting and went to the 6:30 meeting. Again, it’s a somewhat silly thing, not earth-shattering or life-saving, but it shows that God is mindful of me. If I tune into him, He will bless me even more than He already has.
-As I look over the past 19 years and the few moves my family has made, I think of God’s hand. We moved on the weekend after Thanksgiving to northern Utah in 2004, nineteen years ago. My husband had a new job which prompted the move. We didn’t really want to move 60 miles north, but it ended up being such a blessing for us. We found so many homeschooling resources and friends at our new place which continue to bless our lives today. Years later, in 2013-2015, my husband’s job situation wasn’t so great. We were losing money every month. I felt it was time to move out of state. I kept thinking of the word “Arizona.” I asked my husband about working out of state. He didn’t even want to talk about it. He wanted to stay in Utah. After not getting the 5th or 6th job he applied for in Utah, his co-worker told him, “Have you ever thought of looking for a job out-of-state, like in Arizona?” That was the help I needed! God was moving in my life to open husband’s eyes to what he needed to see for our family to move forward.
-My husband’s parents have both passed away now. My mother-in-law’s seven brothers have all passed away. Two of her sisters-in-law are still alive. One of the sisters-in-law is also my husband’s cousin, Aunt Jan. That’s because my father-in-law is her uncle. In other words, an uncle and a niece married people who are siblings to each other. Confusing, I know! Anyway, I’ve been thinking of how wonderful it would be to have a night where we could hear family history stories from Cousin/Aunt Jan. I didn’t even express this desire to anyone, not even God, I’ve just been thinking about it for months. A few weeks ago I got a text from my husband saying that we had been invited to an evening of food and storytelling with Aunt Jan. We had it just last night and it was so wonderful! Cousin/Aunt Jan is myhusband’s oldest living cousin. As a child she lived with my father-in-law for the first six years of her life. They were like brother and sister since they are only 10 months apart in age. It was so fun to hear her memories of my father-in-law and his parents, my husband’s grandparents, especially since he has no memories of his Grandpa Clarence and very few of his Grandma Esther.
I know that God loves each of us. I know He provides for each of us in His own way, in His own time. I challenge you to look for the little happenings in your life to see the order and the connection back to God. Then write down how you see God providing for you and go back and read about God’s provisions often. You will be more joyful because of it!
What’s your favorite Christmas picture book? For me, that’s like asking which of my children is my favorite, or which board game is my favorite. It’s hard to pick just one!
Here is a fun podcast from Pam Barnhill of Your Morning Basket where you can hear some homeschool moms share their favorite one. I enjoyed it!
If you want more Christmas picture book suggestions, check out my family read-alouds and traditions website here, under the “December” heading. This is my favorite list on the whole site! I just love, love, love Christmas picture books!
If you want an easy way to do a Christmas Picture Book Advent, use gift bags! It’s my daughter’s idea. So much easier than wrapping the books, and much more fun than having them all displayed at once. Go here to learn about that.
Tree of Life Mothering 