This is three of the girl cousins asleep in my living room, under the “lights of the Christmas tree”. This was one night last week – as the trial run for the next couple nights, because we are actually starting Christmas tonight. Yes, my “tree” is actually 3 porch decorations strung with one strand of lights. This is the space our living room can afford and how my children have done it the last few years, :-D. Tonight my cousins are coming and will spend the night, then tomorrow is a hang out day with a big dinner (dad smokes meat – yummy!) with all 16 of us. Then the cousins will go to their house and we’ll have our traditional Eve of Christmas Eve with my brothers’ families. We do our Christmas on Christmas Eve morning so they can each have their own Christmas morning and go to their wives’ families on Christmas day. This year we added one more night/morning to include my cousins :-D.

I think of this ‘pin’ when I’m trying to not go crazy when my living room looks like this! My living room is 15×15 and we do a lot of living {read: all our living – school, work, crafts} in this space. This is on Tuesday night working on Christmas presents.

{Memories in the Making!}

Yesterday was a significant day in Alaska – December 21st. It is the shortest day of the year, from here on out we gain daylight. Starting with 2 seconds today – yes, every little bit counts! This is the view from my living room, yesterday during the brightest part of the day. During the winter I don’t get any direct sunlight into my apartment. The sunlight on the trees is the most I see for many months – when there is sunlight from now on it will be inching its way down the trees. 😀 – yes!!!

I hope you are having a very merry and blessed Christmas season, even with the lessons learned and other hardships of the year. There is restoration available to all who ask – John 21:15-19. This weeks sermon is still in my mind. The reality is I will fail. Very simply we were walked through the process of Peter’s Restoration, this is after he has denied Christ three times (earlier in John, chapter 18). I’m going to note these steps of restoration with our Christ here, so I know where I can find it again later :-).