And now for some pictures. We had a fine Christmas tree this year, with one caveat: it was huge. Apparently the Schrafs lack good spatial judgement when it comes to what will fit in the corner of our dining room. Next year, a tape measure will be coming to the field.

And we're off! The hunt has begun.

The men are prepared. This is serious.

"Oh it's so cuuuuuuttte!"

This one will definitely fit in our house.

Tree found, Elijah assists his father in the cutting-down duties.

Brynny lends her cuteness to the scene.

The tree is bagged and ready to go. It really doesn't look that big this way, right?

Handel's Messiah is playing in the background- tree decorating has begun. We wrap our ornaments in newspapers and store them in boxes during the rest of the year. The kids just love opening the little packages and seeing what's in them.

Fast forward to Christmas Eve and our cute kids!

I guess it's hard to tell from these pictures exactly how big the tree is. We had to rearrange the dining room to fit it and cut off the top. But it certainly was pretty.

Christmas night, waiting for the guests to arrive for supper. I'd say it turned out to be a fine tree.

Tonight is a good night to write a kids post. I’ve had a good day and I’m feeling blessed. I had moments of actually feeling like I’m a pretty capable mom, as opposed to the general “what the heck am I doing?!” feeling that I have most of the time, flying by the seat of my pants through the day. The last two days have been great and I’d like to hold on to that feeling for awhile. It’s funny, because the good stuff started happening right after an incident three days ago in which I really messed up and realized my need to repent of some behavior.

There was a typical sibling squabble in the kitchen with loud screaming coming from the younger child. I marched in, already convinced, without doubt, that my older child was the guilty party. So when I asked him what happened I really didn’t even give him a chance to explain-he started, and I rudely interrupted, loudly supplying answers for him to my questions. He burst into tears of frustration that I wouldn’t let him talk and kept interrupting him. I was instantly humbled. I could see just how rude and frustrating I was being. He didn’t even want to try explaining after I apologized, he was so upset about it. It took some work to  restore our relationship. And in the end I realized, um, well, he wasn’t at fault after all. And I am very fortunate that he forgives easily.

A few minutes later I was trying to get them out the door (we were running late for school) and the usual dawdling was happening in terms of shoe and coat donning. A certain smaller child kept giggling and running away while I tried to help her into her coat and I was starting to bubble up with anger at her lack of obedience and our general lateness. My tone of voice started to descend from nice mama to very impatient mama. Elijah was already waiting by the door ready to go and said “Mom, watch your temper…” and again, I was humbled. My temper has been wreaking havoc a lot lately and I was grateful to him for pointing it out to me. I told him how much that helped and encouraged him to point it out anytime he noticed it.

Well. We *were* still running late and once we got in the car I switched into “drive to school as quickly as possible mode,” because, you know, the teachers turn into fire-breathing dragons if you show up a few minutes late, (sarcasm! they are awesome teachers). So of course you need to risk your life by trying to get there as soon as possible. In the process of driving to school with this mentality I am ashamed to say I had not one, but two close calls which would have been entirely my fault if they had resulted in accidents.

That was when I had one of those wake-up moments that there is a blaring area that I need to work on: patience. I just hadn’t realized how out of hand it had gotten. Nevermind the above incidents, my days are just filled with “hurry up, quickly, just do it, come on… please get to it…” even when there is no earthly reason except my own impatience why my kids should hurry up. I’m rushing along from thing to thing and getting frustrated when an explanation takes 10 times longer than it needs to. And it drives my kids crazy. When I get like this tempers are short all around.

So I came home humbled and started to pray… and have been working my utmost on this area for the last two days. Now that I am open to it I feel God’s prodding constantly… “slow down… take it easy… stop and listen to what they are saying, it’s great!” And it is. And the kids respond SO positively when I slow down and exercise patience. It’s a completely different atmosphere.

I wish I could say I’ve changed for good, that’s it, from now on I am going to be “Patience Mama Extraordinaire!” but I know. I know these things don’t change overnight. I’m pretty sure God that probably includes focusing on patience today, a few weeks from now, next July… and again and again. I’m just so glad for His forgiveness… again.

We don’t have a whole lot to report for November, but it was a lovely month. Birthday parties were attended, visitors were had, Thanksgiving was spent at the abode of the Pfurrs in NJ. Sometimes it’s nice not to have a lot of excitement to report. Just lots of nice family time.

Family Leaf-raking day!

Brynny spends a lovely morning making toddler creations.

Our beautiful Boodles

Elijah driving his "car."

Nutty has taken a liking to Elijah's teddy bear.

It’s time to catch up. I wish I was spending more time blogging and documenting our life for posterity, but I guess the truth is we are spending such much time doing life that there’s not much time to step back and blog about it. Which is a pretty good thing, I guess. For example, yesterday I taught Elijah how to cut snowflakes and we spent pretty much the whole afternoon making them and hanging them in our windows. I saw snowflakes when I closed my eyes and tried to sleep last night, so that gives you a good idea of how many we made. It’s so addicting that I am tempted to stop blogging right now and go try my hand at a few more.

Here’s some of the things we’ve been doing since, say, October:

Setting up army battles with Grandpa.

Hanging with Granny.

Watching for hawks.

Crawling around in the woods on our hands and knees searching for cool fungi.

Flying down hills in the go-kart Marc built.

Celebrating the birthdays of a 3 year old and a 6 year old.

Enjoying visits with good friends (Aimee and Priyasha, from Arizona).

Climbing in bins of pumpkins.

Dressing up as Bob Hope and Virginia Mayo. Oh alright, you probably don't know what I am talking about unless you are extra-special... they were a princess and a pirate for Halloween.

Assisting Mom in conducting probability experiments.

So you can see we’ve been up to a lot. And that was mostly just October. Since then we’ve had loads more adventures. We’ve also been knee-deep in the parenting trenches, helping Elijah to learn a little self-control at school (not getting in girls faces and waving his hands going “Blecccccch!” loudly, mostly likely accompanied by a grin and a little dance, if I know my son), and Brynn to not screech and cry every time she is displeased about not getting her way. Oh, and should I mention crayon on the TV screen or the marker fights that left everybody “wounded” with marker streaks? They still haven’t washed off. We’re having fun. Next up, November!

It was a cold a blustery day outside yesterday, but it was warm and cozy in our nice bright home in Baltimore.  Elijah was at school so it was just Brynny and I at home. I decided to bake my friend Heidi’s Sweet Rice Muffins with the leftover rice from Wednesday’s stir fry. I get pretty excited when I have a cup or so of leftover rice now because they are very tasty muffins! First, we got all the tools of the trade out.

I measured the ingredients and my little Brynny-helper-elf dumped them in and stirred. I added cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to the recipe for a little extra kazam.

Then I let her fill up the muffin cups with the batter.

Ready for the oven!

And the best part- eating. We made tea (I put lots of milk in Brynn’s and she calls it “girl tea”) and sliced some pears and I have to say it was a very nice elevenses.

I might mention that we are thinking of changing the name of the muffins to “Snickerdoodle Muffins;” the spices I added really does make them taste like snickerdoodle cookies! They were excellent.