DIVINEY FAMILY: 2016

So first, I must say that God has been so good in this season. I purchased the Advent book from She Reads Truth and it's been a beautiful way to have the Word before me at this time of year. They have broken the advent weeks into Christ's role as prophet, priest, and king; ending with a weeks reading of the birth of Christ from the book of Luke. I CAN NOT believe its three days from Christmas and I know that last week of December at my parents goes so fast so basically it's like three days from the new year. I met with my fellow tutor to get some help in planning math games for the next semester so it felt good to be pro-active and not feel like I would be coming back to quite such intensive tutor planning. I thought I'd better get the first half of December up because I know my phone won't have room for all those Christmas pictures unless I delete everything. So here is everything. Also I would just like to say I'm so pleased that the Duryees will be heading to language school. We have supported their endeavors to be on the field in Spain for several years now and I'm so happy for them to be taking their next step. I am excited to play for the first time at our church's Christmas Eve services. We are usually traveling. The preschoolers are being taught Go tell it on the Mountain to perform and Isaac asked on the way home what the mountain did wrong. I realized he thought the song said "Go, tell on the mountain". =) Just last Sunday we gathered with the cousins and aunts at Grandma Trudy's. Isaac kept saying, "This present says 'to Trudy'. . .they forgot to put grandma". I had to explain that she's not grandma to everyone! lol. We always love seeing the kids and I couldn't believe how big they were at the dinner table. Not a baby to be seen, just a bunch of big kids! Yikes. All my pictures of the cousins are on Jeremy's phone which means they will never end up on here because I'm way too lazy to get them off of it.

yum warm laundry

Christmas Dinner at Daniel's broiler this was through the frosted window with the garlands and lights on their outside deck

using all metallic papers this year

PRESENTS. This will be only the second time that we have opened our family presents just the five of us. We are a little crazy about getting together with family for that stuff. We plan to leave Christmas eve after the last service and drive over to mom and dads arriving in the middle of the night for Christmas later that day.

I sort of had to have these massively chunky garlands.

Isaac wanted orange but we had this rather bright pink so we ended up with a vintage hot orange.

We were happy this past Tuesday to continue our sugar cookie tradition with the Royals. Lindsey wasn't happy with her dough and I should have added more vanilla because my frosting just tasted like powdered sugar. Thankful for good friends.

We had six inches of snow the second Friday in December which is almost unheard of around here. It was like a blizzard all day with crazy blowing snow. I thought we might have to cancel our family Christmas with Jeremy's Dad, stepmom, and family, but he came home early and it was mostly raining elsewhere so it was just me in the snowglobe lol! The kids LOVED it and were outside most of the day. These pictures were when it was a little clearer and a brief stop of the snow but it was still windy.

cute doggies in coats

nicely drawn sleigh blake

not bad writing for a lefty

This was our homeschool group putting together care packages for homeless. Trinity said she couldn't wait to do it again next year so I said maybe we would put together some in the summer as well.