Christmas Break = More Piano and Reading

 I love Christmas break. The girls do more piano practice than usual, and we all do alot more silent reading.

Pajama Oscars

 Avril attended the "Pajama Oscars" at our church's youth group meeting tonight. I'll say. If there's a prize, she's sure to be in the running! 

Present Interrogations

 The girls interrogated me when I came downstairs for lunch. They asked all sorts of questions about the Christmas presents they knew I had been upstairs wrapping behind a locked door. It was all good fun. Aren't they silly? 

A Meditation on Gifts

It takes a few hours to wrap all our family's Christmas gifts. 

While wrapping today, my thoughts turned towards gifts and all that I know and believe about them. 

Gifts are good.

Not only good, gifts are even Godly. 

God is the Source of all the things we have, and He is most generous. 

It's out of His abundance the universe was created. 

It is from His being that we have our existence. 

God pours unmerited gifts on His Creation and its creatures, and all the best things in life originate in Him.  

Scripture says, "Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father in Heaven." James 1:17

Human parents are like God when we give our children good gifts. 

Jesus said, "If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him?" Matthew 7:11

I am delighted to give my kids mostly everything on their Christmas lists this year, because mostly everything they asked for is good. 

God, unlike us human parents, is a truly perfect Father, so we can ask Him for good things and trust that these things will come to us or that, if they don't come to us, God has good reasons to withhold them. 

We can pray confidently to God for what we want, knowing He has promised to give us good gifts, but that doesn't always mean that God will give us everything we ask for. 

I wouldn't give my kids everything they want, especially if I didn't think the stuff they wanted was good or if I didn't believe they would use the gifts in the right ways.

This could be why we don't get what we ask God for in prayer. 

God may withhold gifts precisely because God is good and because we are bad. 

The Bible says, "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so you may spend what you get on your pleasures." James 4:3

God, being perfect, is certainly perfect at judging what we should and shouldn't have.  

God might not give us what we want because what we want might actually hinder, harm, or ruin us. 

A cozy gaming chair ensures that a teenage son will be comfortable playing video games for hours. 

A makeup desk ensures a teenage daughter can sit comfortably applying her makeup. 

But will that dear son be too comfortable gaming to enjoy anything else?

Will that beautiful daughter be encouraged toward vanity and pride?

In our foolish blindness, by next Christmas, we will complain and fret that our sons aren't interested in anything but video games and our daughters are so self-conscious about their appearance that they are afraid to engage in life. 

We need God's wisdom when we choose gifts for our children. 

It's so easy to get it wrong. 

God would never give us gifts that would put obstacles in our way. 

We don't want to make the best things harder for our children because of our "gifts." 

Lord, may our gifts not be millstones. 

May these gifts be true blessings. 

Perhaps it's better, after all, that sons have less-than-optimal gaming set-ups. 

Perhaps it's best, after all, that daughters have to lean far, far over the bathroom counter and get an ache in their necks in order to apply their makeup. 

There are gifts I have planned and chosen for my kids that they didn't ask for, that they don't even know about yet, that I want them to have because I'm in a position to will these good things into their lives. 

It is the same with God. 

He gives to each of us as He wills. 

He divides the portions, talents, gifts, faith in the measure He ordains for each of us.

It is not for us to compare our portion with the portions of others. 

But we are to receive His gifts with thankfulness, trusting, believing we were given what we have in perfect love. 

And now we give God's gifts back to Him by using them well. 

 

Our Library Protocol

I don't let my kids go to the library during the homeschool year. 

It's shocking, I know. 

But through much trial and error, I've determined that library books can be a huge distraction from all the really great books and all the really important assignments they are supposed to be reading and completing during the homeschool year. 

One too many great novels didn't get read in time or research papers didn't get written until the night before our CC community day because of some Harry Potter or Artmeis Fowl book. 

(Actually, I'm pretty sympathetic to Harry Potter. I once let my daughter stay up till midnight before community the next day because she had finally finished all her schoolwork for that week and she only had a few chapters of the last book to read.)

So library visits are reserved for the weeks when we have official homeschool breaks. 

The library is right next to the piano studio where the girls take lessons, so after lessons and during holidays, it's a treat to go over and get some new books. 

We went yesterday, since the girls are on Christmas break and it was the day of their lesson. 

Right now, they are upstairs reading a book aloud and have been reading aloud like that for hours. 

It's a beautiful thing. 

Of course, the books they check out from the library are approved by me first. 

I've lived and learned the hard way that there's a bunch of pornography and propaganda passing for popular juvenile fiction these days. 

But most of that junk is still only in the YA section, so the YA section just stopped existing for my family after enough evidence showed it wasn't worth the drama, and we were all fine with that. 

For now, there are still plenty compelling stories that the teens and even the adults can enjoy in the Children's Section.  

So I let the girls scan those shelves and make their choices, but then they bring the books to me and I scan them and make the call whether the books will actually come home with us. 

I follow discussions by likeminded moms online to know more about the most popular titles and stay informed about what's generally good. 

Or I can usually make an informed call about an unknown book by simply scanning it for a few minutes right there in the isles.

If a book doesn't pass inspection, it goes back on the shelf. 

And my kids don't argue about this. They literally happily move on to the thousand other choices they can make that day. 

My kids know the library is a privilege and totally optional, and it's a privilege and option they won't risk by arguing with my over one book. 

And please, don't feel sorry for my kids over our library protocol. Our home could compete with any small library, so when I say the library is optional, I mean it's literally optional because we basically live inside a library. 

But the library is so magical, I'm happy to have found ways to make it continue working for our family. 

Norah's Home

 

Our oldest daughter is home from college for Christmas Break! 

We picked her up at the airport Saturday afternoon, and she got to choose what kind of restaurant we went to for dinner; She chose Mexican. So we took her to a favorite Mexican restaurant where we already have a lot of fun family memories. 

Later, we all settled in at home and instead of going to bed, she decided to come downstairs to visit with the fam. But that really just means that she just fell asleep on the couch with her feet towards the fire in the midst of us all!

We just read and talked quietly around her for a few hours, happy to have her in our midst.  

Biscotti Basics

Adele and I spent most of the day Friday making all sorts of biscotti. We gifted half of it to dear friends. 

Here's a basic biscotti recipe you can endlessly adapt. 

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons butter, cool and chopped in chunks

1 cup sugar (or brown sugar)

2 eggs 

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (1/4-1/2 teaspoon almond, anise, butter, mint, etc. extract and/or flavorings)

1-1 1/2 cups of dried fruits and/ or nuts

Directions: 

Sift the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. 

Mix together butter and sugar. 

Add eggs one at a time. 

Add vanilla and any other extracts or flavors

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet little by little by hand. 

Add whatever dry ingredients you want up to one and half cups. 

Prepare a baking sheet with cooking spray. 

Shape dough into a ball to transfer to baking sheet.  

Shape dough into a long loaf on the baking sheet. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. 

Take out the loaf and allow it to cool 5-10 minutes.

Carefully transfer the biscotti loaf to a cutting board and cut it into strips. 

Return strips to sheet and bake another 7 minutes. 

(You can lower the temperature in the oven at this point if you desire.)

After seven minutes, turn the pieces again and bake them on the other side for another 7 minutes. 

Cool pieces on a wire rack. 

Enjoy with hot coffee! 

Kitchen notes:

We made almond, cinnamon brown sugar, mixed fruit and nut, chocolate chip, and peppermint chocolate. 

I want to try the basic recipe with vanilla and almond and anise extracts, chopped almonds and pistachios, and cranberries. I think that combination will be beautiful and delicious. And the red, green, browns, and whites of that combination will be festive for Christmas.  

I need butter and mint extracts now I've run out. Butter is impossible to find in the regular grocers, but maybe I'll try a cake supply store or Amazon Prime. 

The peppermint chocolate piece had mint extract and was surprisingly good when I dipped it hot coffee. If I want the chocolate to be smooth when dipped and dry, I need to research recipes for dipping chocolate and add something to the melted chocolate morsels. But, as it was, we simply melted the morsels this time. The thick, dry, melted chocolate really caked on and this probably just made them even more delicious.