Deck the Halls (especially those halls in the Tinney house)

Here's a recap of the many crafts we've done this year. We managed to get into the Christmas spirit early this year and decorate just after Thanksgiving. This gave us almost a whole month to have some fun making Christmas crafts and making presents.

A few weeks ago, I took Catherine on a mommy/daughter outing. We went to Masterpiece Mixers to paint. This is a local painting studio that has daily "classes". Each day they have a painting that the teacher is going to show you how to paint. Catherine has really begun to show her artistic interest and talent and I thought this would be a fun thing for us to do. I picked a day that they were painting a simple Christmas picture and she did so awesome! You can see the picture above- I only helped her outline the large ornament and 2 of the smaller dots. I also did the black ornament hook and helped with the white swirlies...other than that, she painted it all on her own!! I think it's highly impressive for a 3 year old!

Harbin got to spend some time with my mom one weekend that he had choir rehearsal and they made a beautiful Gingerbread House. Harbin was determined he would wait until January 1st to eat it, but decided a few days later that the candy looked so good, he and his sisters would share it now instead of waiting for it to get stale.

The kids spent over a week of school making Christmas cards this year. The girls worked on their crafting skills- cutting, gluing and drawing, while Harbin's focus was a bit more intense including handwriting, spelling, mirror images (that's how we cut out such perfect Christmas trees) and of course, the spirit of giving.

After making Christmas cards, we worked on painting some ornaments. Last year I learned this neat way to drip paint into a glass ornament and then swirl the paint around by shaking the ornament. This craft taught us tons of cool things like colors, mixing colors and even that Daddy doesn't sin....yep you heard me right, Scott is perfect!!! Haha, no really, in the middle of making this craft I needed to break and nurse Ella. Well to avoid the inevitable shattering of ornaments and paint splatters that would result in unattended children, I decided we would all take a break and do storytime in the family room. We were talking about why we celebrate Christmas. We discussed the fact that "Jesus was born on Christmas, to live a perfect life, and die on the cross for our sins, so we can live forever with Him (the kids memorized the blanks and this became our house motto for the Christmas season). In discussing Jesus' birth we also began discussing why we need a Savior. We talked about sin and I asked the children to name some things they had done that are sinful- Lydia said she had never sinned or gotten a spanking...Harbin pointed out that she had just lied which is a sin :) Anyways, we moved on from that and I asked them to name times that mommy has sinned. They were able to come up with a few, so I asked them what Daddy had done and they said (and I quote)..."He doesn't sin." I felt no need to discuss that no man is without sin and instead let them just keep thinking their daddy is perfect. However, I did make sure that they understood, only Jesus can live a completely perfect life, void of all sin!

And finally, the story of my sick kids... This week before Christmas we returned from Chattanooga to take Lydia to the doctor. She had been running a fever all weekend and we decided to make that Monday appointment since she didn't seem to be getting better. The doctor diagnosed her with strep throat (an all too common thing around our house) and sent her on her way with a prescription for an antiobiotic and lots of sleep. Well, Tuesday morning (our anniversary), I woke up to 3 children with fevers, a baby who was wheezing, and my very own stomach bug!!! I quickly called Scott home from his run (thankfully he was off work this week), cancelled our previously scheduled massage for our anniversary and tried to schedule a doc appointment. No appointments were available so the kids waited until walk in hours began at 5. I stayed in bed all day and Scott manned the house, the kids and the constant dosing of medicine. He then loaded everyone but Lydia up and took them for the 3 hour long doc appointment where we learned that Harbin and Catherine also had strep and Ella had a double ear infection and brochialitis. So that trip brought us home with 3 more antiobiotics, a steriod and a nebulizer!! We decided to cancel our plans to head to mom's for decorating cookies and just stick around the house. I felt great the next day, but none of the kids did. Scott and I managed to alternate who went out for errands like grocery shopping and Christmas shopping and we made it through. The kids were well enough on Thursday for my mom to come over and bring some cookies and frosting she saved so the kids could still decorate.

Let's just say this story is to be continued and since I am writing this post "after" Christmas, I know that there is much more to tell!

Hope everyone else is staying well!

The mom.