Happy New Year's Eve! I hope that you are all happy and healthy this December 31st, 2008! May God richly bless you all in this coming new year! I'm adding a new song to my playlist because it has really spoken to me recently about looking around me for those who are in need; whether it be physically, emotionally or spiritually. I want to have God's eyes and heart for all of humanity so that I don't just walk through life unaware of the hurt and need of those who cross my path. I want to see everyone the way that our Heavenly Father does; with a heart full of love for His children!

That is my prayer for 2009!

God Bless and Happy New Year!

Give Me Your Eyes

(words to the chorus of the song by Brandon Heath)

Give me Your eyes for just one second,

Give me Your eyes so I can see,

Everything that I keep missing,

Give Your love for humanity.

Give me Your arms for the broken-hearted,

The ones that are far beyond my reach.

Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten.

Give me Your eyes so I can see.

The Children Were Nestled All Snug In Their Beds......

This is a picture of the kids after they put out some milk and cookies for Santa. We tracked Santa all evening on the Norad web site and when we saw that he was close to North America, we headed off to bed! We hope that you all have a blessed Christmas day! I'm adding my favorite Christmas song to my playlist. I hope that it speaks to you about the true meaning of the season and that you have welcomed the Holy Child into your hearts!

Welcome To Our World~by Chris Rice
Tears are falling, hearts are breaking
How we need to hear from God
You've been promised, we've been waiting
Welcome Holy Child~Welcome Holy Child
Hope that you don't mind our manger
How I wish we would have known
But long-awaited Holy Stranger
Make Yourself at home~Please make Yourself at home
Bring Your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be filled
Word now breaking Heaven's silence
Welcome to our world~Welcome to our world
Fragile finger sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born~Unto us is born
So wrap our injured flesh around You
Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sin and make us holy
Perfect Son of God~Perfect Son of God
Welcome to our world

Christmas Presents at "Build a Bear"!

Our good friend Marilyn had a special treat for Beckett and Helen on Monday! She took them to the Build A Bear Workshop in the mall and let them each create their own stuffed animal! They were so surprised and had so much fun! We have never done this before and since we hardly ever go to the mall, I don't think that they even really knew that this place existed! Marilyn's daughter, Elyse and her boyfriend, Joe joined us and we had a great time. We went to lunch at Salsarita's afterwards! To see many more pictures of Beckett and Helen creating their stuffed animals check out Marilyn's blog! She has some really great pictures of the day! Thanks again to Marilyn, Elyse and Joe for making such a special memory for Beckett and Helen!

SANTA!

A sweet little elf told me where our favorite Santa would be this past weekend, so we made a special trip on Friday afternoon to see him! We usually get to see Santa every year at Sean's work Christmas party, but we had to miss it this year. I love "our" Santa and the kids have always had their picture made with him, so I was happy that we were able to see "our" Santa even though we missed the party! He had three of his reindeer with him and Helen and Beckett each had plenty of time to talk with him. It was a great day!

Helen telling the big man what she wants!
Now Beckett has Santa's ear!
Merry Christmas!

Edible Nativity Scenes!

On Monday morning, several families from our Homeschool Family Connection group got together at our church to let the kids create these nativity scenes out of food! The stable is made with graham crackers and icing, Mary and Joseph are Keebler Elf cookies, baby Jesus is a teddy graham lying in a graham cracker manger with shredded wheat for hay and of course the animals are animal crackers! (And the angel is a pretzel with a marshmallow head!) Everyone had a good time and it was fun to see how they all turned out! Everyone enjoyed listening to the story of the birth of Jesus and the importance of keeping Him at the center of all that we do this Christmas season!

We worked around the huge island in our church kitchen!

Beckett, Matt and Luke working on their nativity scenes. There was a lot of tasting and finger licking going on! Yum! Holly, Abbey and Nathan

Helen missed the event because she was at Mother's Day Out, so when I picked her up we invited Carson and Carly to come over to our house and make their own nativity scenes too!
Beckett was a pro by now, so he helped Helen put hers together!
Here is Helen's final product!

To see Beckett's nativity scene and to check out his thoughts on the day, please check out his blog, "The Slam"!

Just Four Short Months Ago......

We were so excited to have a new van! We LOVE our van! It is so nice to have so much space! We can take Beckett and Helen's friends with us when we go places! We take good care of it and try to keep it vacumed and cleaned out! Did I say we LOVE our van? Well, on Sunday we left church and went to Turkey Creek because I needed to run in to Target to return a couple of items and to buy two strands of lights for our Christmas tree. It was going to be one of those "in and out" trips while Sean and the kids waited in the car for me. Before we could get to Target, we had an accident. I won't go in to all of the specifics, but we were "rear ended" and the back of our van is now crunched up pretty bad! Everyone is OK (even though my neck, shoulders and even my collar bone (seriously!) are really sore!) but the van took it pretty hard! We were able to avoid hitting the crazy driver who caused the accident, but the man behind us was not able to avoid hitting us. Some people have asked me if I'm sad about my new van being all smashed up, but I'm really not. I'm so thankful that no one was hurt! It is just a car! We are blessed to have two other vehicles that we will be able to drive when the van goes to be repaired! So, just as a reminder...here was the big day just four short months ago............

And here is what it looks like today! (Along with some dramatic poses from Beckett and Helen!)

If you happen to live in this area and you plan to drive in Turkey Creek area between now and Christmas, please be careful! The police officer told us that he had written up 10 similar accidents over the past 3 days on the same stretch of road. The traffic in there seems to have trippled in the last few weeks! Please be careful no matter where you are driving!

Something Important to Consider This Season......

A Holiday Tradition.....

Everyone is feeling better so this afternoon we made a trip out to re-stock the fridge and pantry! We bought a few extra items so that we could indulge in one of our favorite holiday treats.....Chex Mix! Sean remembers making it with his grandmother during the holidays and he loves it! Beckett and Helen enjoy picking out their favorite parts of the mix! The house sure smelled good tonight!

Helping dad with all of the ingredients!

The final product! Yum!

Follow the Co-pays and the Prescriptions to the Harper Home!

Monday~About one hour after dropping Helen off at Mother's Day Out, I got a call from her teacher that she had thrown up. I picked her up and we ended up at the pediatrician that afternoon. Double ear-infection. Prescription for an anti-biotic.
Tuesday~Since I had to cancel the doctor appointment that I had made for myself on Monday morning to have him look at my eye, I made another one for Tuesday morning. I have pink-eye! They gave me a prescription, but Marilyn gave me some prescription eye drops that are taking care of it!
Wednesday~Beckett had been complaining since Tuesday afternoon that it hurt to swallow. I thought he sounded like he had strep. After a trip to the pediatrician and a strep test, no strep....just a bad cold. We left the pediatrician and headed back to my doctor because my cold just wasn't feeling better and I thought it might be a sinus infection. I was right. Sinus and ear infections. Prescriptions for de-congestant and anti-biotic.

Four co-pays and four prescriptions later and we are all headed toward recovery. It has been an interesting three days at the Harper Hullabaloo!

Bernese Mountain Dog

OK, funny story that I just had to share! Back in October we went to the Orvis store in Pigeon Forge so that Sean could spend some of his birthday money on a new reel. Beckett and Helen both found these very cute stuffed dogs and they really wanted them. They were totally sad when we told them that we were not going to spend Orvis prices on a stuffed dog! (I think they were at least $35.00!) Helen was especially pitiful! (See picture below!) Anyway, one of the dogs that they had picked out was a bernese mountain dog. (See other picture.) So, here is the funny part. Today we had Christmas music playing and Feliz Navidad came on the radio. Helen came through singing along, and at the appropriate time, when the chorus came on, she sang, "bernese mountain dog" instead of "feliz navidad"! It was too funny! I'm putting the song on here so you can try it for yourself! It fits perfectly! Pretty clever!

A special friend has returned.....

We came home tonight from Waynesville, North Carolina after a great visit with our family and found that our favorite elf, Buddy was back! Buddy came last year after Nana and Papa brought him to us and we began a new tradition! There is a book called "The Elf on the Shelf" and each family who has an elf gets to give him a special name. The elf then begins to help Santa by flying home to the North Pole each night to let him know how the Harper children are behaving! Beckett and Helen named our elf "Buddy"! He shows up after Thanksgiving and he will be with us until Santa comes on Christmas Eve! Each day when he returns to our home, he will find a different place to sit so that he can keep a good eye on us! Tonight when we returned home, he was in a basket way up on top of a bookshelf! We are excited to have him back with us for the Christmas season!

We had a great Thanksgiving celebration with both sides of our family! Here are all of the Harper cousins eating lunch on Thanksgiving day!
We played a game of pin the pilgrim hat on the turkey and Beckett was WAY off!
A picture of Beckett when he removed his blindfold and saw where the hat was! Also a picture of Lillie with her Oreo turkey that we made with the kids! The next picture is of many of the girls as they were playing. I wanted to put this one because it was the only one with Marley! She was napping most of the time that we were there, so I didn't get any other pictures of her!

We traveled to North Carolina on Thursday afternoon to be with my side of the family. Here is a picture of most everyone playing a game of Trivial Pursuit...another fun tradition!

My aunt was asked to serve on an art commission for their town and they were given the task to find someone to create a sculpture. After a LOT of work, she was excited that they finally erected the sculpture about a month ago in downtown Waynesville! We went down to see it on Friday and took a lot of pictures! It is really a great piece of artwork and we are proud of Auntie Mame for all of her hard work to make it come together for their town!

Fantasy of Trees!

On Wednesday, Beckett, Helen and I went to the Fantasy of Trees with our friend Julie! We had never been before and probably would never have gone if it hadn't been for our friend Marilyn. Her class sponsored and decorated a tree this year and I helped her decorate it last Sunday afternoon. She received several free tickets to the event and gave some to us! It was so fun and helped us get excited about the upcoming Christmas holiday! I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures with Julie, but it was fun hanging out with her all day and we are so glad that she went with us! Beckett enjoyed the "tubs of fun" ride and Helen was all about the ballerinas! They have a stage where local dance companies put on special Christmas recitals! I see a possible performer in our future! She was mesmerized by all of the dancers from the very young to the teenagers. I enjoyed watching her watch them! The first picture you see is of Beckett and Helen with the "Tea Time in Tennessee" tree that I helped Marilyn decorate. The rest are just random pictures from the afternoon!

We are blessed to be able to share this Thanksgiving holiday with all of our family today! We will go to Sean's parent's house for lunch around noon and then after a few hours there we will head to Waynesville, NC to my aunt and uncle's home where we will be with my parents and my sister as well! Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration with your loved ones!

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever!

Psalm 107:1

Fast Forward 12 Years!

Last Weekend at the Harper Hullabaloo

Late last Thursday night, Granbob and Grankaki came to spend the night with us. They stayed for a little while on Friday and visited with us. Here is a picture of Grankaki and the kids. She can really multi-task! She had a game of Dinosaur Monopoly going on with Beckett as she played baby dolls with Helen!

On Friday night we went to the Kirkland's home for our Homeschool Family Connection barbecue dinner. It was a fun night and a great time to connect and get to visit with other families in our church and community who are homeschooling their children! No pictures, but we had a great time! On Saturday night, our friends the Campions came over for dinner. They lived here and were in our Growth Group until last June when they moved back to south Florida. They were in town for a few days and spent some time with us on Saturday night. It was our first time to meet baby Caitlin and it was fun to catch up with JT, Stephanie and Jeff!

The next two pictures are from Sunday night. We have nine families who come to our home on Sunday evenings for Growth Group. If all nine families are present and they bring all of their children, we would have 22 kids ranging from 12 months old to 12 years old! (and a 4 month old, too!) I don't think all of the kids have been here at once, but this past Sunday night, we had 18 here! The first picture shows several of the kids eating some snacks. Every Sunday, each family brings some food to share and we spend our first few minutes of the evening eating and fellowshipping!
This second pic shows 14 children in our bedroom. Now that it is too cold to go outside, the kids stay in our three bedrooms and play or watch a movie while the adults have our discussion time. (We follow our sermon series at church and enjoy discussing ways to apply the the truths from our pastor's sermons to our lives.) It is hard to see them all, but here are 14 of the kids (and 2 that you can't see) getting ready to watch a movie! That doesn't always last for long. Ususally the younger ones end up in Helen and Beckett's rooms playing. Amazingly, this past Sunday night went pretty smoothly!
It is a blessing to have so many families in our home each Sunday night!

(I know that cross over our bed looks a little lonely! That is an "Uppercase Living" expression gone bad! If you aren't familiar with Uppercase Living, google it! They are really neat. I bought one at a party and when I put it on my wall, it didn't apply as neatly as they said it would. I had to remove part of it and now my cross looks really lonely! I have a plan to fix it and make the wall look better, just haven't gotten around to it yet!)

Beckett and Helen have been waiting for over a week for the "Elf Yourself" website to be ready! They discovered that it was up and running so we HAD to create our elves for Christmas 2008! Enjoy!

The Harper Elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Veterans Day Parade

On Tuesday, I took Beckett and Helen to the Veterans Day parade in Knoxville. We had a great time. It was a good opportunity for all of us to learn a little more about branches of the military, heroes of war, what it means to serve our country and why we do it! Check out Beckett's blog to read what he learned that day!

D A D

I know a little girl who is SO excited that she can write her daddy's name! Tonight she learned how to make an "A" and a "D"! Put those together....and she can write DAD! We even learned a "Y" so she could make "daddy"! She absolutely cannot wait for Daddy and Beckett to get home from BSF so she can show them! She keeps writing it over and over and over. In between writing it each time she jumps up and down and grins from ear to ear! It has been so precious! What a sweet memory!

Every year when the leaves begin to turn colors, I have taken pictures of the kids under some pretty trees in our neighbors backyard. So, this year I tried to be like my friend Olivia and "think outside the box" when I took the pictures! I love the pictures that she takes! They might be off center or a little crooked, but they always look so great! I'm guessing that she also has a really cool camera! Anyway, here are some pictures of my attempt to not make everything line up perfectly and be symmetrical! That is a real stretch for me! Ha! Anyway, I don't really understand the flash on my camera either, so this was the best I could do! I did have some pretty cute subjects if I do say so myself!