The week after Christmas was filled with putting things away that we had gotten and tearing down decorations. As I was taking the ornaments off the tree, Caleb's sweet little voice kept asking me "why are you taking that off, Mommy? Where are you going with that?" I felt downright GRINCHY! I told him that Christmas was over so we put everything away until next year. He was sad to see our "pretty" things go away. He asked if he could put his crafts on next year's tree, and I told him yes.
Even when Shawn got home from work, he said "Wow! Our fireplace doesn't look right without all our stockings up there." I couldn't agree more. But, that's part of the specialness of Christmas. And it was time to head into a new year.
I was having some serious issues finding places to put everything, but then I thought of Luke 12:15-21 about the man who wanted to build bigger barns to store his abundance. It made me realize I need to stop all this hoarding I do. We need to get rid of things we no longer use and make room for the new we've been blessed with. It's been difficult having three boys in three different stages of clothing, at three different toy stages. But, really, how much do we use or need? I tend to save things for the "what if" times when we should be giving away, selling for the money that we could use, or simply throwing out some old junk. Here's the story about the rich fool from the Bible:
Luke 12:15-21: 15Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
I certainly feel like our house is "stuffed full" but maybe I'm really a "stuffed fool."
That week, I called Grandpa Georgia to see if he'd like more leftovers. I told him I'd treat him to breakfast at our house if he'd also bring with him some celery and chicken broth, which I would pay him for. Thankfully, he agreed. And I made homemade chicken corn noodle soup with the leftover turkey we had (is that turkey-corn-noodle soup then?). Either way, it was the best soup I think I've ever made. I gave Dad a big container of it to take home with him, and our family at it for days. Shawn wasn't sure how turkey corn noodle soup would turn out, but he was thrilled with the result as well.
On Friday, the two older boys visited Mamaw's house in the morning so I could do some actual cleaning. I scrubbed and mopped and tried to make everything relatively clean again. Thanks, Mom!
We hadn't realized that trash would go out on the Monday after Christmas and assumed that would be the trash company holiday. We were appalled to see the truck drive by our house and not get rid of all the stuff we had waiting to go! It literally filled our back porch. It went the following week, praise God!
The last week of Christmas was also full of a lot of playing. We played Joshua's new "dice game" and told tons of stories that we make up based on the pictures, we played a TON of Wii particularly with his new Mario game, we did a ton of racing cars on their tracks, we built things with new toys, and we played and played and played. We also read Ry-guy's new books. You can see him holding his new 'Kiss Good Night'
book, and the older boys love the story about 'You Can Do It, Sam!' where they make cakes and deliver them to their neighbors (which I thought one winter morning we may try as well). We also read 'Don't You Feel Well, Sam?' and Joshua has worked on sounding out the words to that book by himself as well. They LOVE it! It was a productive week, but we still had fun together. :) :) :)
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