I’ve sorely neglected my blog over the past few months. Life has just been extra crazy and finding time to write is often-times few and far between. I figure I’ll just start from where I left off, and blog around the pictures as I find them.
December brought lots of health challenges. God is so faithful, and He continued to show His hand at work through the good, and the bad. We are so thankful that each and *every* His mercies are renewed. Great is His faithfulness. <3
December 1st was the Christmas parade in Centreville. This is always a lot of fun for us and a highlight of the Christmas season for my family! This year, Daniel got to join in for the first time, and that was especially wonderful as well. 😀
Setting everything up:
Darby was a little Christmas elf! <3
Parade lights through the fog:
One of the things that I love about the Centreville parade is that they always take the parade route up right in front of the nursing home, and they bring the residents outside and bundle them in blankets so that they can see the parade. It brings tears to my eyes every single time. <3
Next up was my birthday- my very first since getting married! The first week of December had been a particularly difficult one for me for many reasons. I actually told my mama that I just wanted to forget about my birthday and move on for the year…I’m so glad my mom and husband knew better. 🙂
Mama and I went out for breakfast, and she brought me birthday ice cream! I so enjoyed getting to spend the time with her for a little bit.
Daniel took me out for dinner and then for a fun evening of bowling! My birthday fell on a Tuesday, so that meant $2 bowling games and $2 shoe rental! Perfect timing, that deal was. 😀
All in all, I am so thankful that the Lord chose to allow me to see another birthday. He is so merciful and good to me in all ways. <3
Next up was the first snowfall we have experienced together!
Isn’t he just the cutest thing ever? I love him so much. <3
I absolutely loved seeing everything bathed in white…we don’t get snow very often in Alabama, but when we do, we sure do love seeing how beautiful everything is covered in snow.
We began attending a new church a few weeks after getting married. It just became very obvious that the Lord was moving us on from the church we had been attending. So, we visited a couple of different places, but ended up settling down in the sweetest little church that is quite close to us. One of the things we love about this church is their heart for reaching the community for Christ. A week or so before Christmas found us passing out candy and tracts to the local community at another Christmas parade.
Afterwards, we went and looked at the Christmas trees on the Tinsel Trail at the West Blocton Coke Ovens park. Everyone did such a great job with their trees!
It was also high-time for us to get our Christmas decorations up. Daniel had the coolest idea for the Christmas tree….
We are STILL having folks come and make comments about how cool that tree was! I’m so thankful for my imaginative guy…he makes life so much fun. 🙂
Some shots of the inside:
The sibling gifts were my idea…these were just too good not to do. 😀
And Daniel made this Christmas card holder for me!
These Christmas cards have a really special meaning to me. It’s a very tangible display of how the Lord shows us love in amazing ways… I had told Daniel I didn’t think we would get very many Christmas cards this year, because we were newly married and most folks don’t have our address. Christmas cards have always been one of my favorite things to look at and send around the holidays. The next day, I found out from a friend at church that we had been added to the Christmas card list at church, and she brought me a huge stack of cards from the Christmas card mailbox there addressed to us! I am continually amazed at how the Lord works in our lives, in both big and small ways. <3
We had our big family Christmas get-together on Christmas Eve…we ate entirely too much and laughed and cut up and exchanged gifts and just enjoyed the time together. This year was super-special- Daniel’s first Christmas with us! 🙂
On Christmas Day, Daniel said that we ought to go and drive somewhere and do something…so we did. 🙂
Mobile was absolutely beautiful, and COLD!! 🙂
That about does it for our 2017 adventures…. stay tuned for how we started 2018 with our trip across the country to see Route 66, the Pacific ocean, and to find some sunshine!! 🙂
We had the most peaceful and restful Christmas season ever this year. We were blessed to be able to spend a lot of time together as a family and just take it really easy. It was truly the most wonderful Christmas we have ever had. Here are a few highlights:
For us, the Christmas season starts with the choir practices for Handel’s “Messiah”, with the Alabama Civic Chorale. This year, I convinced Mama and Matthew to sing with me!
We practiced each week at a lovely church, and as we got a little closer, we had the opportunity to go sing at the shopping mall and on the local news:
A video posted by Courtney Lambert-"The Awesome" (@thedixiesongbird) on
I did a dress mini-session of my recital dress before the actual performance. I thought it might be fun to try, so I did!
This is a photo of Mama and I just before the performance:
This was my second time to have the opportunity to study and sing Handel’s “Messiah”. This year, like last, I found myself fighting tears at the end. It is such an incredible way to memorize scripture and have the opportunity to present the gospel to people who might not hear or read it otherwise. I find myself praying in the weeks leading up to the performance that we might be a light to the folks coming to hear it. I know many come simply because it’s their Christmas tradition, but they are still being presented with the gospel message. It is absolutely incredible. I’m so blessed to have the opportunity, and am thankful the Lord swung those doors open for my family and I.
As the days continued onward, we started doing many of our annual traditions.
I went and cleared out the local Dollar General’s stock of eggnog. Because eggnog, right?
Then it was time to start putting up the décor. We actually did most of the outside stuff first. Matthew and I took care of the bulk of it. I guess you can say we were the “lighting engineers”.
And then, it was time to do the inside.
We actually rearranged the entire back room of our house so that we would have a nice place to sit and watch sappy Hallmark movies. Because sappy Hallmark movies. =D
Here are some of the other highlights:
My parents give us a commemorative Christmas ornament each year. This was mine for this year:
I find that it was very fitting. 🙂
Of course, I would be neglecting so much if I failed to give a hat tip to the Christmas parades. This year, we participated in all three of the Christmas parades, which means I have driven a parade float four times in two years. If we do all three again this year, I’ll have driven the parade float seven times in three years. It’s kinda thrilling!! =D
First things first….making the big heads:
Mounting Snoopy:
Then there’s rewiring the trailer:
Getting folks sat down and ready to ride:
It was a little odd to be perfectly comfortable in a short-sleeve shirt for the final two parades. Just saying.
Here’s a quick video of the float riders in action!
We really enjoyed getting to do that again. 🙂
Life started to calm back down post-parades. Now it was time for music practice:
Realizing we made the paper for the 2nd year straight:
Oh, and trying to keep Jackson from opening all of the presents. At the time, I had the entire action assembly out of our Story and Clark piano, so there was quite a bit of extra space. I realized we could hide the majority of the presents inside of the piano, and he wouldn’t be able to get to them!
We had a couple of creepy appearances from Elf:
And I loved making personalized homemade gifts for everyone this year. Some were made while watching sappy Hallmark movies (I’m starting to notice a theme here…)
Others were made where time permitted, and everything was made from things already on hand here.
And this was a favorite thing I made. This was for Mama….it’s the Lambert family as a pod o’ peas!!
Here’s everything wrapped up and pretty:
Christmas dinner….need I say more.
Daddy said we got to leave the decorations up until New Year’s this time, which was really nice. We were sad to see them come down. I think we are finally, finally coming up with where each thing should go permanently, so between that and the very detailed packing we did last year, we had everything up in less than two days- a record!
To finish this out, my dad makes a “look back” video each year, and shows it on Christmas Day. This video is just a few of the highlights from the year, so that we can look back and reflect on all that God has done through the year. It’s always fun to see the different places we’ve went, the different things we’ve done, how much the kids have grown from the previous year, etc. I’m thankful Daddy is skilled in this area and can share that gift with us. It has become a special legacy.
Well, I’m still working on catching everything up, so there will be more postings over the next few days. It’s been a “happening” several weeks around here! =]
