My sister Mary Ellen joined us later in the afternoon to go to see
The Nativity Story at the Regal Cinema. We decided to take some
formal pictures before we left.

First of all we wanted a picture of just Dick and I, but this
bad boy kept trying to get into the picture. I said, "That's
okay, I'll just crop him out." So he squeezed himself
between us!

Mission accomplished!

Dick and I with four of our five boys (Jeremy had Christmas
with Lisa and George.)

The whole gang, including Mary Ellen. Back row: Abby,
Ray, Sam, Mary Ellen, Lori. Front row: Elizer, Frank with
Destiny, me, Dick, and Anthony.


And after that we were off to the movies. The Nativity Story, which just came out recently, is worth seeing. It was a good family activity for Christmas Day, especially with lots of popcorn so generously provided by Frank.

Our Christmas Eve

As I sit and write tonight, it's hard to believe that it's still Sunday. It seems like going to church this morning was a different day! This afternoon Dick took Destiny to Enid's house in Lancaster. She'll be coming back tomorrow. Frank and Abby and Anthony and Lori are not coming until tomorrow, so our evening was spent with Ray and Sam. We had fun playing Triominoes and Take One (with Scrabble letters) and eating my peanut butter rice krispie treats. After we were all finished I realized I had not taken any pictures, so Dick got the camera and we staged a re-enactment for the camera!

My day started very early and my eyes are barely staying open to write this. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Our game-playing re-enactment

Ray and Sam, my game buddies.

An evening at Mary Ellen's

I had a nice, low-key evening at my sister Mary Ellen's lovely home last evening. She and my parents and I sang Christmas carols at the piano and then sat and talked for a while.

In case you didn't see my post last evening, I'll say again that the video from Sunday evening's musical is on Anthony's website, www.anthonystauffer.com. For more details, see last evening's post.

"That's the Good News" is on Anthony's website

I just got finished watching the video of "That's the Good News", the musical I directed at our church last Sunday evening. Our son Anthony recorded it with his digital camcorder and now has it on his website, www.anthonystauffer.com It's the first time I've ever been able to sit back and enjoy it and feel the emotion of it all.

For those of you who were in the musical, or any others, for that matter, who want to order a DVD, Anthony will make you one for $5.00. Just let him or me know if you want one. I suppose if you just wanted a listening CD instead, he could probably do that too.

Dick went to work at Advance this evening and took Destiny to Frank's for the evening. I'm heading over to my sister Mary Ellen's house. She had my parents for supper and we want to sing Christmas carols around the piano.

FINALLY

Whew!! School is finished until after the holidays. FINALLY. This week has not seemed any less busy even with my programs over. There were so many things that had become urgent because they had been put on hold for so long. (Essential things like food to eat and clean clothes to wear.) Plus we still had school until noon yesterday. Plus I went Christmas caroling Wednesday evening to Hamilton Arms Retirement Home, where I go monthly with some other ladies from church. Plus I finally went shopping Thursday evening (an experience I enjoy less and less as my feet protest more and more), and last evening we had a candlelight service at church for which I needed to prepare music. And in between all that I was trying to find enough time to sit at this computer in order to honor Miki on her 40th birthday (by the way, don't have your children's birthdays near Christmas, if you can at all help it!!) , and to put together the pictures I wanted to use on our family calendar. The place I order from does such a good job that I really felt that if I could have gotten the order to them by Thursday, I'd have had the calendars by today. But I just could not accomplish that. So I won't have anything to give our boys who are here with us on Christmas Day, which I hate. (We don't do regular gift-giving anymore, except for the children.) Oh well, I know we'll have fun together anyway. Our tradition is a fondue meal. We were at Lisa's for Christmas last year, so we didn't have our fondue meal for two years now.

Below is a link you can click on to see the pictures that will go on our 2007 family calendar.  If it doesn't work when you click on it, you may need to copy
and paste the link into your browser. 

file://localhost/C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/jrtjs/My%20Documents/2007%20Family%20Calendar/2007%20Calendar%20Pictures/index.html

The Lindmarks - Kris & Miki with Katrina (13), Bjorn (10), and Jackie the dog.

A tribute to Mikelle Annette (Stauffer) Lindmark

Now, as promised I want to give Miki the proper recognition for her 40th birthday. It's almost impossible for me to believe that she is eleven years older than I was when I became her mother!

Miki was almost 14 when we first learned about her through some friends of ours at church. We had just given a home to a 15-year-old girl from church for a few months (she had returned home) and were taking classes with Church of the Brethren Youth Services (COBYS), a new foster agency. After meeting Miki, we took a few weeks to think about whether we wanted to take this big step. We had also talked with COBYS about it and they had agreed that they would take her into their program and place her in our home if we should decide to do that. One morning, after a few weeks of indecision, I really cried out to God to please give us some kind of clear direction so we would KNOW His will, one way or the other. That very afternoon the phone rang and it was Miki. She said, "Well, I made up my mind. I do want to come live with you." I still chuckle every time I think about that. I didn't realize she thought the decision was up to her. But it was the answer to my cry. On New Years Day 1981, Miki moved into our house and has been a member of our family ever since. I found out a few days later that she had been bussed from Lancaster City to a church in Ephrata. On her 14th birthday, December 21, 1980, she had responded to the invitation to receive Christ as her Saviour. So when she came to us a few weeks later, she was a new baby Christian.

Her life story is enough to fill a good book, and maybe someday I will write it. It is an amazing story of God's grace and His power to heal and change a life. (She gives a bit of her story on her blog, which you can access on my sidebar. I also gave the story of how she met her husband and came to live in Sweden on my July 20th post.) Just as in Joseph's story in the Bible, what Satan meant for harm, God meant for good.

We love you, Miki, and we're so blessed to be your parents.

This was Miki at age 14 when she joined our family.

And this is the family she came to live with - Lisa was 7, Anthony was 4, Jeremy was just turning 1, and Dick and I were around 30!

Happy Birthday, Miki

Today is our daughter Miki's big 4 - 0!! I will not have time to write more until later this evening, but I wanted to just put this on my blog, because they are 6 hours ahead of us in Sweden, and I didn't want you, Miki, to think that I had forgotten that it's your birthday today. More later.

Making picture collages

I've been spending time these past two evenings getting pictures ready to send off for the family calendars I get made each year. I always give one to each of the children. The birthdays and anniversaries are printed on the calendar. I had such trouble choosing which pictures to use that I've ended up making collages for each month, which of course is taking me longer than ever. But it's so much fun. Here's an example - this is Destiny's collage:

That's the Good News

Below are pictures from the musical I directed at our church, Grace Community Fellowship, Sunday evening. (I have had the most unbelievable difficulty getting blogger to post all these pictures. This is my third try, and I think they finally all posted.) This choir, including two guest soloists, involved people from eight different congregations. We did the musical, That's the Good News. I fell in love with the message, the music, and the drama as soon as I discovered this musical four years ago. I've been hoping for the chance to direct it ever since. The choir, the soloists, and the cast this year were a PERFECT fit for this musical, almost too perfect to be true. And as I said before, the Lord anointed our efforts and blessed us with His presence, and it was just one awesome experience!

The Christmas Choir, close-ups and actions shots.

Close-ups of the choir in action.

More close-ups of the choir.

More shots of the choir in action

The cast

Below are pictures of the cast. The neatest thing of all was that the people who played the parts were related to each other just as the people in the drama were related. The drama characters were a man named Will Masterson, his daughter Lynn, her husband Aaron, and their daughter Annie. Those parts were played by our pastor Dennis Andrew, his daughter Amy Howett, her husband Bryan, and their daughter Taylor. They each fit their part so perfectly.