Merry Christmas!

It's been a wonderfully busy and exciting day at our house. We read the conclusion of our advent story this morning. It was exciting and heart-warming as the main character was reunited with his family and found and held the baby Messiah in the stable with his family.

We enjoyed a visit from Grandma Butler and later a nice turkey dinner. Afterwards we visited a couple of our neighbors, put the little ones to bed and then played a new game with Kendal and Kelsey.

We are especially thankful today that our prayers have been answered and Noah is not requiring medicine for reflux anymore! We stopped it last weekend and he has done very well. Little Mary was so faithful to pray for him everytime our family prayed together after devotions. We hope she will be encouraged by God's answer too!
Since we have many out of town relatives who've sent such lovely gifts I'm going to just post a lot of photos of the children with some of the presents.
Enjoy the photos...
These are, of course, the signs of "boy" toys in the house: suction darts stuck to the patio door!
This is Isaac opening up his remote controlled helicopter from Granddad and Susan. Tomorrow, when it's charged, it will be even more exciting! Noah really enjoyed the gift box more than he can appreciate the cute musical octopus! He's not sure he trusts that toy. We all think it is very smart!

Oooo! A helicopter! Two boys-two helicopters!

Mary has two Jim Shore Angels now. She's the youngest girl to have a special Christmas collection started by my step-mother, Susan.

All three little girls with their new, teeny babies. One of their favorites for certain!

Moms and Dads don't get many gifts, BUT, this year I was blessed with two gorgeous pieces of jewelry: a marcasite cross necklace from Dad and Susan and a very lovely pair of green amethyst earrings from Bob! I just love surprises in little boxes! In fact, my favorite gifts come in small packages, for example our eight precious children!

It seems that all the children want to learn to play guitar. Instead of buying a very expensive, large one, we decided to start small and take lessons at home first. Grandma Butler provided this one and the lesson dvds. They are so excited just to have one of their own to touch and play! Hopefully we'll have a couple of talented worship leaders one day.

Joy and Anna are holding their silver cross and snowflake Christmas ornaments. These are part of their special collections.

Many years ago Kendal and Kelsey received duffle bags with their names on them. This year, Anna, Joy and Mary received theirs from Dad and Susan.

Well, that's just a sampling of some of the material blessings of the day. It's great to be together and enjoy family and friends and the love we share. God is good! Merry Christmas!

More Christmas fun

For Noah's Christmas, we bought a large, square playpen. It's so neat with toys on the sides and a playquilt-type bottom. He will have alot of (safe) room to play in now!

Sweet Mary in front of our Christmas tree.

Noah is wearing his new Christmas outfit from Bob's Aunt Patsy. This gift is from Granddad Thurman and Susan. Noah looks thrilled!

In the middle of all the holiday bustle, we had new doors put on our great room and a few windows replaced around the house. It looks really beautiful and we're so thankful to have no more drafts in this room!

Sweet Joy is wearing a dress from Bob's Aunt Patsy.

Holiday Fun

Since it's Noah's first Christmas, we let him touch, taste and crawl after a few ornaments.Noah made such funny faces when the branches touched the back of his head while we were taking pictures. He made the same funny faces today when he rolled onto an artificial wreath in the floor. Clearly he isn't fond of scratchy, artificial tree branches.

Kendal and Kelsey and their girlfriends from church enjoyed a Daddy Date Night last Friday night. Four dads and six young ladies piled in one van and went to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens to see the lights. Then they went to a very nice chocolate shop in downtown Va. Beach. It was supposed the be the night they sold Christmas trees together for our church's House of Blessing (where people in need can get groceries and help with their bills), but all the trees were sold out. Thankfully nearly $5,000 was earned for the needy. The dads took this opportunity to plan something else special with their eldest children. The girls are all in families of six or more children, so having a night "on the town" with Dad is very special.

Here are Kelsey, Kendal and Bob at the chocolate shop.

This is Erin and Steve Pollard.

This is Cailin and Lee Gwaltney.

And this is our pastor, Brad Shedd, Sophia and Olivia.

All the girls in front of the outdoor Christmas tree in Downtown Va. Beach.
Now that Noah is nearly eight months, wetried to take some professional looking photos of Noah in his first two bigger boy outfits. They don't look professional but some are really cute, we think.

December...

We celebrated Kendal's fifteenth birthday last week. She and I (Marcella) spent most of a day out together shopping for her birthday requests. We shared lunch at Panera. Then she started a painting project at Pots n Paints (a local paint your own pottery shop). We ended the day with the whole family eating her specially requested dinner followed by a birthday cake, of course!
We live less than a mile from the starting poing of the Great Bridge Christmas parade. At the last minute, the older five children and I bundled up, and dashed with our hot chocolate to catch it. We had alot of fun and decided that we will definitely go again next year!

Joy is thrilled that she and Noah are old enough now, that they can snuggle together without help. Noah looks happy too!

Kendal and Kelsey had been admiring this tree in our yard for a few days before they decided to photograph it. They appreciated the gold and blue contrast the most.

These are our pirates:Daniel, Mary and Anna. That is their ship. They have a well-stocked galley onboard, sleeping bags and plenty of...what are those eye pieces called???

Noah looks so cute in this hand-knitted sweater. Grandma Butler found it at a church garage sale in Atlanta. We really needed it since his first sweater shrunk this week! oops!

We've made a couple of trips out to shop for some very special folks. We filled an Operation Christmas Child box with items that Anna, Joy, Mary and I found together. And today, all eight of the children and I found gifts for two elderly persons who were on the Angel list at our church. It's always a blessing to shop for people who have so little. We won't likely meet the recipient of the Christmas child box, but we will visit the nursing home next weekend for gift giving and caroling. That will be our children's first opportunity to do this, atleast so far as they can remember.

We're still homeschooling on most days. This week the children have begun to decorate the house. We have no parties or large meals planned in our home this year at Christmas time so, they are free to decorate as they like. It looks lovely so far! Bob has promised to get out the tree and trimmings on the weekend. The little ones have already asked if the grocery store is selling eggnog yet. They are relieved to know that we will have an ample supply for our family's cozy evenings around the tree. Some nights are not so nostalgic of course. But thankfully the children tend to forget those!

We read an advent story every night. My dear friend, Tarita, loaned Bartholomew's Passage to us. It's part of the Jotham's Journey trilogy, advent story. It's historically accurate for biblical times and very exciting. The stories all culminate at the manger during the Messiah's birth. We highly recommed all three of the books. Tabitha's Travels is the third title.

We've printed our Christmas photocards, but are hesitating on writing the annual Butler family letter. That is my job...it's so difficult to communicate on one page how God has blessed our family during the year. We try to be so careful not to be boastful or leave out any important events or people. I find it very challenging. I keep looking back at the old ones to remind me of what special keepsakes they are for us. Rereading generally encourages me to continue the tradition. So, I better get busy reading. :)

It's time for a schedule!

It's been good to have Kendal back home with us. She adds so much joy and laughter to our home. It's great to see her enjoying Noah and everyone else. On Saturday she braided Mary's hair and put Lincoln Logs at the end of each braid. Mary loved it!


Sadly, Bob's mother has hurt her back, so we've spent some time helping her and we left Kelsey to stay with her for a few days last week. So this week is actually the first week, since vacation,and back to school, with all of us home again.

While Kendal was away for three weeks, we worked on a new schedule for the housework and daily chores during the school year. Our goal is to provide more blocks of uninterrupted time for the older girls' schoolwork, and some afternoon time for projects or reading.

Our biggest change is that we send Kendal and Kelsey off to start school right after breakfast and family bible study, instead of including them in morning housework. That means that I delegate kitchen clean-up, care of Noah, Mary and Joy, laundry, other housework and assign and teach elementary schoolwork until lunchtime. We do it all over again after lunch, until all schoolwork is completed. Anna and Daniel have a lot more schoolwork this year since they are in second grade. That translates to more teacher-time. Noah was in my tummy last fall and that was much easier than keeping up with all of his feedings and clothing changes (he's still spitting up) this year. Mary and Joy are old enough to get into fights over all sorts of things...Anyhow, it's a challenging period of transition. Kendal and Kelsey have more difficult schoolwork these days, and the increase in the number of people talking in our house during school hours is adding to the chaos. We're all having to learn how to be quiet, at the same time, for an extended period of time. Explain that to a five month old, two year old, four year old, six year old, etc...

The good news is that after three days, we finally started school well before ten o'clock. Today, it's nearly lunchtime and practically everyone's schoolwork is done. Phew! Monday and Tuesday did not move as swiftly.

I snapped some photos on Monday of the Breakfast Clean-up Crew, Joy sorting laundry and Kendal and Kelsey doing schoolwork.






This morning I was burping Noah, while taking a splinter out of Mary's finger, and Joy was brushing my hair. It seemed like good material for one of those homeschooling cartoons that we love so much! It looks sweet and peaceful enough in the photo, but I felt comically multi-tasked!
Bob, in his husbandly wisdom, has decided this is the perfect season to restart our "date nights". Until last night we had taken Noah with us and nearly abandoned the tradition all together. We went to our "secret place" (Carrabba's) and had a wonderful dinner and dessert. The children were orderly and sweet in our absence. We'll try to find a way to have a weekly date from now on! We are thankful that God is patient with us in our relationship with him, in marriage, and in parenting. At breakfast the children and I are studying I Cor. 13 until we memorize it and have applied habitually. We need lots of love without conditions around our house. :)

Family Vacation in the Mountains

It's hard to come home after spending a week surrounded by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. We were blessed by friends of my mother and stepfather, who own gorgeous wooded property with a lake, cabin, guesthouse, waterwheel, real spring water, wild grapes, deer, creeks,...ahhh. Paradise.

Buck and Darlene, our hosts, showered our family with fun, food and great fellowship for five days. They even slept in their motor home so that our family could have their lovely cabin to sleep in. Mom and Bill slept in the guesthouse and brought all sorts of supplies to make life easier for us and helped us with the little ones everyday. It was like living with four grandparents. What a blessing!

We were all glad to see Kendal. She loved every minute of her four weeks of vacation!!!

Eventually we settled into a routine and everyone had a chance to enjoy boating, 4-wheeling, and sitting around the fire after dark. We tried to figure out how we could move there and make a living...we're still working on that!

Once home, with the State Fair rained out, we decided to go to Kitty Hawk, NC to climb Jockey's Ridge. That was one of our Nagshead Last Day of Vacation traditions. So in one week's time we had been 3,300 ft above sea-level where water came out of the rocks, and back to the sand where the rivers all run into the sea! Amazing!

We have many gorgeous photos. Hopefully we'll make our holiday card with one. I'll post a few for today.

Bob, Isaac and Daniel at the top of the pasture.

One of many bubbling creeks.
Hanging out on the dock by the lake with Grandma Brenda. Kelsey was in the boat taking the picture.
All eight Butler children with the lake and cabin in the background.
Anna playing checkers with Grandma Brenda, with Kendal watching.
Kendal, Joy, Anna, Kelsey and Molly Kate (our hosts' dog) in the Johnboat.
The waterwheel that runs into the lake.
The Butler family on the steps of the cabin.
Anna, Isaac, Buck, Kelsey (holding Molly, another dog of our hosts'), Mary, Daniel, and Kendal on a very slow ride on the four wheeler back to the cabin from across the lake. By the way, Kelsey had atleast one of two dogs in her boat, bed or arms most all of the time we were at the cabin. It's a wonder that we didn't come home with one!

This is my favorite view on the whole property. Bob and I rode this trail several times! Buck and Darlene with our family. This is a storage shed built over the water. It looks like a millhouse, or boathouse. Picturesque.
Kelsey turned thirteen on the first day of our vacation. It was a VERY exciting day for her. Wait until you read her version of it!
While all the big kids were out four-wheeling, Mary enjoyed a Cherry Coke with a cookie! Shhhh! Don't tell.
Noah on the hammock with the woods in the background. So cute in his sweater!The children at the base of the mirror horse, in NC at Kitty Hawk Kites, across from Jockey's Ridge.