But 'Mary Beth' treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.

A birthday party for Jesus!

A host of terracotta "potts" angels

Decorating our tree.

Zoo Lights

Every Christmas it was a tradition to read Luke 2:1-20 as a family on Christmas morning before we opened our gifts. I have continued this tradition with my children but this year I wanted to do much more so starting at the beginning of this month we began the journey with Zacharias, Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph. I wanted my children to focus on the true meaning of Christmas and to really understand why we are celebrating. The title of this blog post is actually from Luke 2:19 replacing Mary's name with my name or actually just adding Beth in the verse. This verse is a special verse to me now that I'm a mom. Before when I read it I never got the significance of it but now that I have children of my own I understand Mary's point of view. Motherhood alone is a HUGE responsibility but being the mother of Jesus Christ... WOW! So as I take this journey of Advent with my children I'm constantly aware of these moments and I cherish them. Thank you Jesus for coming to earth and saving us, thank you for my children, help me never to take for granted the time I have with them and I pray that Ellie, Ethan, and Eli will learn early in their lives the kind of relationship you desire to have with them and Your will for their lives. AMEN

Halloween 2010

Ellie and I have started a Halloween tradition. Ellie tries to come up with the most original costume she can think of and we make it! Ellie and I love arts and crafts so this is a great challenge for us. The first few years of her life she chose to be some sort of princess... a ballerina princess, a fairy princess, a disney princess, and so on but one year I managed to talk her out of that and the crafting began. It all started with an ice cream cone in 2007 then we had to do a golden fairy creation in 2008, in 2009 she was a cupcake and this year was a red lego. The past two years she has won first prize at the school fall festival in her category.

The boys are not as big into the arts and crafts part but they do enjoy coming up with a costume. This was the first year Eli participated wholeheartedly, in the past he was not to keen on putting anything on his head or over his face but now he wants to do whatever Ethan does. That worked out great this year because Ethan wanted to be the Super Mario Brothers so Eli was Mario and Ethan was Luigi. Last year Ethan was Indiana Jones (very cute) and he also won first prize at the school fall festival in the preschool category.

This year we went trick or treating in Hernando with some friends. We all rode on a big trailor and hopped on and off (not as much fun for mom and dad). The pictures above show costumes from this year, the trick or treating trailor ride, and carving pumpkins with Dad.