Best Christmas Present Ever

Can you believe I am doing 2 posts today?

I just read my friend Rett's post from today and boy did it get me thinking. Yesterday our pastor ask us what the best gift we ever got was and then Rett just asked the same thing. It really got me thinking about the best gift I ever got.

I have been the type of person that it has always been very hard me me to make a Christmas list even as a child. When I got married my husbands family makes you do a Christmas list and that was the hardest thing ever.

When I was a teen (I think about 15) my mom ask what I wanted for Christmas and I couldn't think of anything. I decided I wanted to give up my entire Christmas to give to an inner city child in Chicago. I found out later that the teen was able to get on a bus and go to California to see family with the money I sent. Do you know that is the only Christmas present I can ever really remember getting? Isn't that weird that the only present I really ever remember getting is one I gave instead of getting.

I'm not telling you this to make you think that I am special or anything because trust me I'm not.

What got me thinking is that as a mom now it would kill me to not buy my child any presents. What if my mom would have said "Sarah, that is a wonderful idea but I really want you to have Christmas too"? What if she would have just sent the money but also went ahead and gave me Christmas? What if my mom would have taken the only Christmas gift that really ever meant anything to me away from me because it would have been hard on her not to buy me something?

I pray that I can be the kind of mom that puts away my selfish desires to let my children serve God. Thank you Mom! Thanks Rett for your post!

What are some special things you remember about a Christmas gift?

Thankful Thursday On Monday - I Won Again

Wow, I was so excited to open up my email this morning to find that I won another giveaway. I am very excited about this one because Chris and I had just decided to take our house off the market for awhile. We were totally depressed about this and I told Chris if we were going to do this that we were going to stop looking at our house as something we will sell someday and that we would make it "our home." For so long we have been in the "we want to sell our home" way of thinking that we didn't bother decorating to make it a home.

I have to tell you that we have one room in our house that I really, really do not like. Our bathroom is tiled more than 1/2 way up the wall in PINK and green tile. Since the day we moved here I have never done anything to it because what do you do with a pink and green room?

Well, God gave me a little blessing this morning and I won the perfect picture to put in my pink and green bathroom. You can go check it out here if you want and go look at the other amazing photographs. Have I told you I LOVE Etsy???

Has anyone been signing up for giveaways since my last post?

I Have An Addiction

OK, since you guys were AWESOME yesterday helping me to stay warm with your wonderful comments I'm going to be very real with you today.



I HAVE AN ADDICTION



Yes, my friends I have become addicted to a certain website. The website I have been addicted to you can check out by clicking here. I can't believe I am sharing this with you.



A couple months ago I won a giveaway on a friends blog and in her giveaway she asked people how they found her blog. Someone mentioned the site above so I went to it and that is all it took. Come naptime or bathtime everyday (after I check my farm on Facebook) I have to go check out this site.


Not only can you sign up for giveaways (by the way I have won a few of them) but you get to find incredible ETSY stores.


I know I am lowering my chances of winning but since you guys are awesome I will share just this one time. Don't tell too many people please!

I AM SOOOOOO COLD!!!

OK, it is way to cold out for my blood today. With the wind chill it is -3 degrees (Jeanette please don't tell me how warm it is there). I love my 2 little Furry babies but man it's not so fun taking them out to go potty on a day like today.

All I can think of is coffee and cinnamon rolls and wishing something hot was brewing in the crock-pot.

My dear hubby is in a men's leadership bible study and they are getting together tonight with us wives to go to a town that has a special Christmas thing that you are supposed to walk all around town. Can you tell I'm shivering even thinking about it?

To help warm up my day would you please leave me a comment with a recipe of your favorite hot food or drink??? PLEASE!!! Also I really want to learn how to make homemade cinnamon rolls so if anyone has an easy recipe for these please give it to me.

I just know you all will help warm me up with recipes because you guys are just AWESOME.


Thanks!

How We Keep Christ In Christmas

Thank you all so much for your comments yesterday. You really helped pull me out of my funk a little bit. I decided this morning I was going to make ME time and I spent some time in the Bible and exercised and that helped too.

Holly ask me to post about how we keep Christ in Christmas and I have been thinking about that since I read her comment.

Well, to be honest we keep Christ in Christmas the same way we do everyday. I'm not one that stresses about making sure I push Christ like crazy to my kids around Christmas because that is something we do everyday whether it be Christmas, Easter or I don't know May 1st.

Oh, we love Santa coming to our home. We make special cookies for him and we have a special plate and cup thanking Santa for coming to Celebrate the birth of Jesus with us.

What do we do to keep Christ in Christmas? Well, we do the same as we do everyday. We pray for orphans daily, we support and pray for a child through Compassion, we make sure that every week when we buy groceries that we also buy for the food bank. This is just a little of what we do and we do it because God has blessed us and we choose to bless others.

It seems like Christmas is a time when everyone is asking for donations, volunteering and you know how the list goes on. We choose as a family to do these things year round and not just at Christmas.

Don't get me wrong, our kids know the reason behind Christmas!

One thing I have done with Amaya though is to challenge her this week to do something extra special or help in a special way at school as a way of giving Jesus a birthday gift.

As my friend Rett said on her blog the other day:

JESUS IS THE REASON FOR EVERY SEASON!!!

Bloggy Blahs

Does anyone else go through this? Maybe it's because I had to work so hard on my blog the last month that I just have the bloggy blahs. I have not even kept up with my bloggy friends blogs very well.

Nothing too exciting is happening right now in our life other than we decided to stop trying to sell our house for awhile. This just stinks because we wanted to build our new house so bad but it's just not a good time to sell now.

We have no little ones coming home soon ( as far as we know anyway) so nothing exciting there.

We do have all the fun Christmas stuff coming up but other than that I'm just in blah land right now. I may not post a lot until I get over this and if I normally visit your blog and I don't right now I'm sorry.

Oh and the answer to the bead questions, you can buy them at Walm*rt.

Maybe if you leave me some good comments I will get over my bloggy blahs.

Raising A Child With A Limb Difference

When we first knew Jaxson was our son we had no idea what we would have to figure out with him only having one arm. I researched prosthetics, adaptive equipment and all kinds of stuff. The first day we had Jaxson we realized very quickly that we didn't have much to worry about.

When we took him to the specialist when we got home I even asked him about a prosthetic and the Dr. told me that it would only hinder him and that he really couldn't have one anyway since he was missing his entire arm.

After the visit with the Dr. we really didn't even think about it much anymore. Jaxson is our son and to us is the same as any other child. He does do things that blow us away once in awhile but those are things that a child his age should not be able to do let alone a child with one arm.

As you can see climbing trees is one of Jaxson favorite things to do.

Jaxson also loves to ride a bike and man he can ride at lightning speed with no adaptive equipment.

Jaxson is 3 and he dresses himself completely, he has been putting on his own shoes since the day we got him, he folds laundry better than any adult I know, he can carry half his weight and really we have not found anything he can't do.

When I took him in for his pre-school testing this is what shocked his teacher.

She couldn't believe how good he could bead. She said he was even advanced for his age in being able to bead like he does and that was if he had 2 arms and hands.

Jaxson was beading yesterday so I ask him if I could take some pictures to put on the blog and he got very excited.

As you can see he doesn't need 2 hands. Jaxson just figures out a way to do anything he wants to. He even cuts with scissors on the line using his feet to hold the paper.

As I was thinking about doing this post this morning I went to www.rainbowkids.com. This is a site you can go register with (very easy) to go look at waiting children. You can even pick what age, country, gender or special need you want to look at. I pulled up limb difference and just on that one site there is 3 pages full of waiting kids that happen to have a limb difference.

If you have considered adoption you should consider one of these precious kids with a limb difference. It may look like a bigger need but honestly I don't think it could be an easier special need.

If you haven't considered adoption have you ever prayed about it?