Happy Birthday, Emily!

Today is Emily's 4th Birthday! My baby girl is growing up!

"Happy Birthday to You!"

We Wish You A Merry Christmas!

Jack, Emily, & Sam have a Christmas message for you!!

The Ice Storm

The electricity went out at about 6:15 AM. The kids must have been awake because we heard commotion in their room and several minutes later, the commotion ended up in our bed with us.

So, we got out our candles and had an "adventure".

Once it was light enough for us to make our way around the house without electricity we ventured outside and this is what we saw. It was absolutely beautiful!

We decided to not risk the drive to church, and bundled everyone up for a walk (or an ice skate) instead. Sam took a few falls,but recovered quite quickly.

Several trees were down in our neighborhood, but no real damage was done.

Electricity came on at 11 o' clock...just in time to cook a nice warm lunch!!

Our Trees!

We actually have 2 trees in our house! The kids have always had their own tree. Over the last several years, during the time of advent the kids and I have decorated a little tree of their own with some sort of theme. This year our tree is called "Loving our Neighbors." We have talked a lot about giving gifts to Jesus by loving our neighbors, so everytime the kids do something to love someone else they get to put an ornament on their tree. They have thought of the ideas themselves, some of which have included taking cookies to neighbors, having friends over for lunch or dinner, or even letting a sibling play with a toy they wanted. I'm hoping the goodwill towards others will last past the Christmas season!!!



This past weekend, we also ventured out to a tree farm in search for the perfect Christmas tree! The first field we came to was filled with baby Christmas trees. The kids found one immediately! They said they wanted to have a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree!! Once I showed the the field with the bigger trees they dropped that idea rather quickly. After finding the tree, Daddy cut it down and we took it home. Of course I forgot to take the camera, so there are no pictures of the tree farm:(





Here are some pictures once we got it home. Before the decorating could begin, Jack had to take care of his hat head hair!













And here is the finished product!

As many of you know I have a bah humbug husband. Even as a kid, he never really liked Christmas. I have to say that he did not complain in the process of putting up the tree this year! Maybe he is just granting my request to not show his dislike for Christmas, or maybe the kids Christmas excitement is rubbing off on him. Who knows? Maybe I'll even get to put ornaments on the tree next year!!

Our Little Drummer Boy

This morning I heard a bunch of commotion coming from the basement so when I went down to see what was going on. This is what I saw:

(Click on the play button to watch the video clip)

Last week we had gone to a youth praise and worship night at our church. Jack came away from the experience saying that he thought the drums were awesome!! I thank God for basements because if he was doing that in my living room all day I think I would go nuts!

Catch Up

We have had a busy few weeks here at the Garvin house, so I am playing catch up since I haven't added any new posts recently.

A few weekends ago our good friends Jeremy and Heather, with their 3 kids Brayden, Luke, and Madison, came to visit . We have known them since our college days. Prior to our move here we attended the same Bible study with them for 7 years. We started meeting before any of the kids came along, so it has been fun watching the kids grow up together. While they were here the kids got along great. They are finally at the age where they can initiate their own play and actually play games together!! It's so nice because we can send them down to the basement and not see them for hours (or until someone gets hurt).

We also got our first snow of the season!! We only got about and inch of snow, but the kids went out and scraped every bit they could find in order to build 2 small snowmen. I think they got confused as to which part of the snowman was supposed to be used for the face, so this smowman has 2 of them.

And of course we had hot chocolate afterwards,Emily holding her cup like me and Jack holding his cup like Bob.

And then came Thanksgving! We were not able to make it home to Western PA because Bob had to work, so my brother Titus came out here to celebrate with us. I have never cooked Thanksgiving dinner before so it was quite an adventure. The ladies at church were giving me all sorts of advice of which I am thankful. Everything came off okay - not great - but okay. I do enjoy cooking so it was fun. Although I have to say that it was rather anti-climactic. You spend all morning (even the days before) getting ready for this grand meal and we sit down for about 15 minutes and its done! I know that some of you (namely my sister Kara) live for the leftovers, but I myself am not a huge turkey fan so it seems more of a chore to finish off the turkey. I'm glad that I can finally say that I have cooked a turkey!

We did have a great time with Titus. We played plenty of games: the German game called Siedler (or Settlers if you have the American version) is our favorite, Jack is in a kick to play Rummy, and Emily loves the card game War.

I have so many things to be thankful for! God in his great mercy has loved me in spite of my own sin and has promised not only to give me eternal life with Him in heaven, but has also made me a co-heir with Christ!! I am thankful for my family as well as my extended family. This year in particular I am thankful for God's provision of fellowship with other believers wherever He takes us.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving too!!

Life Away From Family

When we moved to Hershey I wondered how we would do without family being nearby. I have found that I do miss them greatly. There's nothing like family!! One positive side to this, though, is that family and friends have taken the time to come visit us and this has been almost sweeter than being close to one another. While we lived in Pittsburgh, we would end up leaving family gatherings early either because the kids needed to get to sleep or Bob had to get up early to get to work. When people come to stay with us they are stuck with us for the whole time! It has been wonderful. We have stayed up to chat or play games and have spent more time in sharing our lives to one another.

The event that has prompted this entry was a visit by Kara and her 3 girls. We had such a great time! The kids played so well together and were truly saddened when it came time to leave. Kara is teaching the girls about the Civil War right now in school so we took a trip to the Civil War Museum, we went to Chocolate World (of course), and the rest of the time was spent playing in the basement while Kara and I planned our Thanksgiving Menus, drank chai tea, and just caught up on each other's lives!

Here are some photos of the weekend:


Chocolate World















These pictures were taken at the National Civil War Museum. The statue is of one soldier helping another and the other was a demonstration of the cannons that were used during the war.

Visitors!

This last weekend Kristen, one of my girl friends from Pittsburgh, came out to Hershey to visit us! My kids just love her son Will. Kristen had never seen downtown Harrisburg, so as Jack put it we went "to see the STAR of Pennsylvania."

The kids weren't too impressed, but liked running up and down the many steps. Here is a picture of Sam trying to catch up with the other kids who are already at the top!














We finally forced them to sit down together for a picture!




After this,we stopped over at the State Museum of Pennsylvania which is right next door to the capital building. At the Dino Lab, we were able to watch an archeologist cleaning up some dinosaur bones. Jack loves anything that has to do with dinosaurs, so that was the highlight of the trip for him. Here is a picture of the kids in front of a life size model of a wooly mammoth.


We then had lunch out on the banks of the Susquehanna River. I'm not sure what the story behind the statue of this man on the bench is, but it took a funny picture.

And of course a visit to Hershey would not be complete without a visit to Hershey's Chocolate World!!!

We had a great weekend!!

Halloween

Out here in Harrisburg and the surrounding areas they all do trick-or-treating the Thursday before Halloween. October 31 is not even here yet and Halloween is over! The Jack-o-lanterns are all in the trash now, yet Halloween is tomorrow.

This is the first year that our kids have gone trick-or-treating. They were so excited...they were up at 5:30 in the morning asking if it was time to put on their costumes! Grandma and Pappy bought and sent out their costumes. Jack was a dinosaur, Emily was a princess, and Sam was a giraffe.

Somehow Samuel was the one that ended up with the most candy. He would walk right up to the door and sometimes into the person's house. At one house he started taking off his shoes like he was going to stay a while. After the person would put some candy into his bucket, he would stick his little hand into their dish and take another, and another, and another.

Happy Halloween!!