All the Christmas Feels

    

 I was reminded today why I love this time of year so very much.  Of course, the most important thing is our focus on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah, our Emmanuel.   Secondly, it's the time we purpose to spend with family.  Trust you me, that gets harder each year as our family grows with marriages, girlfriends and boyfriends, and the wonderful grands as we try to round everybody up the same day, phew! We love family so very much, so eventually we will figure it out and share Christmas joy.  But the very next thing I love so much this time of year is unpacking and gazing on all the memories.

I walked around the house today after decorating last night and it just put a huge smile on my face and in my heart.  I love to reminisce over all the amazing years I've been blessed with celebrating this time of year.  I love unpacking the Christmas boxes and finding the first Advent creation Rusty & I did with all the felt pieces that he cut out and that I glued together from a Focus on the Family Christmas celebration book we used.  I love unpacking the pictures the children painted over the years, or my first Santa & other stuffed animals we collected for the children, putting together the manger scene that was passed down to me from my mom as we reflect on every character, wrapping the tree in the Christmas skirt Aunt Fran made with love, placing the wood painting my sister Sandi created and gave me in the bathroom, seeing all the ornaments from family & friends that hold special meanings (like the family stockings ornament Becky & Brian gave me with all the children's names on them), hanging all the handmade ornaments from when the children were young and so much more.  I love it all.   

 I love the pageantry of the season at various churches in our area from the Singing Christmas Tree, to the Augusta Youth Chorale Christmas program, to the drive thru nativity scenes, candlelight services, and the way our church (Kiokee) celebrates throughout the Advent season with Scripture, songs, and so much more.  It does my heart good to see how the church comes together this time of year to celebrate the season with family & friends whether it's watching someone else's children in a Christmas play, enjoying the Nutcracker ballet on stage, walking Lady A park lit up for the holiday with ice skating and hot chocolate nearby, or any of the other holiday festivities.

I love the cookie swaps, the gathering of my children's friends for parties, the wrapping of gifts, Christmas with their classmates to end the semester, and when we can participate in Christmas caroling (this year it will be in American Sign Language).  

 I love the smell of a fresh Christmas tree.  I broke the kiddos hearts by not being able to go to our sweet family in North Carolina this year because our schedules didn't jive to pick our tree.  We went to our local Lowe's and found a beauty.  However, we still stuck to our traditional Christmas tree decorating dinner and snacks of appetizers (meatballs, pizza, summer sausage & cheese) with the specific cookies (chocolate peanut butter off brand from Wal Mart like Girl Scout cookies & the Keebler Elfwiches), and eggnog.  We had either Christmas movies or music in the background and shared many a laugh.  

I don't listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving, but from that day forward I cannot get enough of it.  There are so many beautiful old hymns, new arrangements, and new songs that my Spotify list is ridiculously long and I enjoy every second of it.   

I could be sad for all the family we are missing this season especially my Rusty, but I'm choosing joy in remembering all those happy Christmas' we had together.   That doesn't mean I may not shed a tear here or there wishing he could see those grandbabies in their Christmas attire, see the joy on their little faces, laugh with his children while opening Christmas gifts.  How he loved our grits casserole that we will be sharing in a few weeks on Christmas morn.  I love remembering how he was the biggest Santa of all wanting to surprise us with secret hidden gifts from extra work he would do to make it special for us all.  It brings me joy to remember those times and I truly feel so incredibly blessed to have enjoyed all those years together.  

 We never can do all the things perfectly as I imagine it should go.   We caught up on our Jesse tree readings tonight before the kiddos at home went to bed.   We will stay on track I'm sure for a few days, get behind again, and catch up again.    I'm working late with papers on the table, the dishwasher & washing machine running, and plenty of clutter I need to get put away that may not get touched until the weekend.  It's continually perfectly imperfect at our house.   I will never arrive or attain to having it all together.  But I've got Christmas music going, joy in my heart, and reminders of love all around my house in various forms of decoration and a few sleeping away in their beds.  Goodnight, friends & family.   I hope your heart is filled with all the Christmas feels this holiday season & you can rejoice in Jesus all your days.

     

Day 3 - Alaska Bound - Illinois to Wisconsin to Michigan

There was nothing quite like our adventure to Alaska this summer.  I'm a few months on the other side of this adventure, and I am already dreaming of another and yet so enjoying thinking back upon this summer.  I love taking the time out of my crazy schedule to reminisce a bit more, and give thanks to the Lord for safe travels, no illness, no accidents, and a summer full of God's beautiful creation that seemed to cause awe every bend of the highway.   

Taking it back to yesterday's pondering of where my adventurous spirit began, I speculated part of it was being a military brat.  Another part of the spirit is probably attributed to hoping to inspire wonder in my children all the years I've homeschooled.   It seems the more I learn, the more I'm awed at God's creation.   But for now, I'll move on to recalling day 3 as we headed to Alaska.

                                                 

We awoke and packed up camp at Starved Rock and headed next to Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  This was quite the experience.  You walk in the castle surrounded by amazing smells of fresh bread.  You then have various rooms where you can taste either cheeses, olives, and/or breads.  We left with cheese curds and cheese bread.  Christopher planned all along to get a cheesehead hat and he followed through with his planned purchase which made us laugh.  This was a fantastic stop on our journey.  Then we didn't plan it, but we couldn't help ourselves.  We had to stop at Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.   It was too close to our travels to miss out.  We fell in love with the Great Lakes that seemed as large as oceans.    These stops would make us get to our campsite too late to hike, but they were so worth it.  We had so much fun exploring these lakes.

We then drove a little more than five hours to Hiawatha, the world's largest statue in Suffolk, Michigan.  He stood over 52 feet tall.  This was a cool place to stretch our legs and get some fun pictures before we headed for our stop for the night.

Last stop on day 3:   Pattison State Park.   We set up camp at dusk, showered, and played cards.   We would finally get hiking in on day 4.  

You can check out the VLOG for this day here.  

Day 2 of Alaska Bound: Next Stop - Illinois

I'm not exactly sure where my adventurous spirit comes from, but I believe it began as an army brat.  We travelled to a new place every 2-3 years until we landed in Augusta when I was 10 1/2.  I never thought I'd be in Augusta when I "grew up" but then I met a boy.   As they say, the rest is history.   We had 8 children together.  Between babies and homeschooling, our travels were usually visits to his family in NC, my mom and brother for years in North GA, family in FL, or annual beach trips when we didn't have so many under 5 years old.  Will continue this part of my story tomorrow, but for now let me tell you about our second day of our big adventure of 2023.

We woke up, made breakfast, packed up camp and headed out dressed for church.   We ended up at Grace Baptist Church in Belton, IL.   It was a sweet church, and it was great to dig into the Word with other believers.  Afterwards, we had a goal of eating food from Illinois.  We found a restaurant called Joe's Pizza where we tried Chicago style pizza.  When we walked in, delicious Italian odors surrounded us.  The boys loved the pizza, but Emily and I preferred thinner crust, less sauce and more cheese.  We were still glad to have tried the real thing.   Next stop was at the Second Largest Cross in the United States in Effingham, Illinois.   It was a beautiful artistic display of the Christ story under a massive cross that travelers can stop and see right off the interstate.   It was a great stretch your legs stop that was made for fellow travelers to ponder the things of Jesus.  

Last stop where we are camping for the night:  Starved Rock State Park.    We set up camp & made plans to hike all the things in the morning.   Another exciting day on the road enjoying the beautiful scenery.   You can check out our day on our Vlog found here.  

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Thanks for traveling with us to Alaska.  Soon we will add our entire Alaska trip to our Etsy shop.  Hope you go find fun travels to go on and make beautiful memories along the way.  Need inspiration?  Follow us and then go make your own adventure.   

The Last Frontier

 

And we're off!    We left yesterday morning heading towards Alaska.   The 4 of us were beyond excited.   We played the ABC game, marked off over half of the states in the license plate game, and sang until we were hoarse.   We drove from home, Augusta, GA, and our first stop was to be the "Largest Cedar Bucket" in the world    However, when we arrived the fence was locked at Cannonsburg Village which was established in 1776.   It looked like a really neat place, and we walked around a bit seeing if we could locate it from outside the fence, but it was a bust.   Next stop:   Nashville

Each state I chose some food that the state was known for and then we all decide what we want to try.  Last night's fare:  Prince's Chicken so we could eat Nashville Hot Chicken.   We tried that a few years ago on our "Yellowstone adventure."   Half of us enjoyed the food, and the other half thought even the mild was too spicy.   

Only place left to go was our campsite for the night.  I saved A LOT of money by joining Harvest Hosts.   You pay for a yearly membership, and as long as you can boondock you can stay at thousands of places across the US & Canada for free.  Our first stop: Broken Point Farm.  We arrived in a beautiful area in Clarksville, TN with farm lands and gorgeous homes.   Our directions were to call the owners when we arrived at their driveway which I did.   The owner met us and had us follow him up to a clearing where he allows campers to stay at his farm.   We set up camp, and realize we are going to need the generator to be able t o sleep because it was 88 inside & humid.     Our only dilemma was my generator came with instruction not to get wet because it would run the electronics and there was a 50% chance of rain.   So, I'm up typing this at 5 in the morning because we set an alarm for 3:30 to unhook the generator and another at 430 (rain was to arrive at 5) to load the cooled off generator back into my truck.  And so we did, and the kiddos are back sleeping soundly.  I'll be getting up the sleepers around 7 to get ready to head to our next destination.   We plan to go to church along the way finding a church that's on the route to our next destination.

That's a wrap for day one, except to remind myself I didn't do my self any favors watching "Missing 411", and  hundreds of episodes of mystery & crime shows over the years or horror movies or books as a youth,   As we pulled up to our "camp" next to an old empty barn with no other person in sight, my first thought was "I just followed a stranger down a long dirt road with 3 other people I'm responsible for and set up camp next to a huge old barn in the woods."   I had to remind the kiddos because they were already thinking "what in the world did she sign us up for" that these are safe places checked out by the Harvest Hosts business and secretly preached that to my overactive imagination until I could relax, enjoy the star filled night, and plan the next day.   Besides that, we bought two quarts of the biggest blackberries I've seen in years that are so delicious from the owners.  That was quite the bonus!  So day one at our first Harvest Homes stop was a win.  Until tomorrow, Michelle

P.S.  Check out our vlog here for pics and videos of day 1.   We should have it up by noon.    

A quick, but not the best picture of night one

Four More Days - Last minute things

We are wrapping up loose ends prepping for our big trip.  To say we are ecstatic is an understatement!    I've been working extra hours at work to make sure I'm leaving things all caught up although I plan to work evenings when I can so I don't return to an overwhelming amount of work.   I really enjoy what I do, so I don't really mind winding down that way in the evenings.    I've checked all my lists, and checked them twice.    This last week I had things we had to check off like the following:

      *  Practice run with the generator

      *  Test run with the tire gauge/pump

      * Got the bit in for my impact driver to test run on the scissor jacks

      * Bear training:   What do if we encounter black bears, brown bears, etc.   

And tomorrow, I want to practice one more time how to do the gray & black water necessaries.

Emily & Praise took my sketches this week and designed my logo for our travel itineraries.   I love it and am so pleased with how it turned out.   After years of friends and family asking me to sell them, I finally began listing them on Etsy.  You can find them here by week's end.  

The picture you'll find on etsy
 for our Great American Road Trip

It's nearly midnight and I still haven't done my duolingo (can't lose the streak, lol)!   So goodnight to all and I'm so excited you guys are going to join us on our travels.  I especially appreciate all that have said they'd pray for our safety.      Bon nuit, Michelle

Our Next Adventure: Alaska!

I haven't written in a very long time.   I've thought of a gazillion subjects to write about while "gone" from the blogosphere but couldn't find or make the time to actually sit and write.   However, after many requests from family and friends, I'm back!   Many have asked for me to begin journaling our adventures.   It seemed selfish at first, but if it gives somebody else the itch to go and see the wonders of creation it will be totally worth it.   

From last camping trip 

What I want to share most with my friends and family is to tell of the goodness of our Lord Jesus.   I want to tell you that He has been so very faithful to me since Rusty passed.    How I was concerned about being alone and found the following to be so true:  We are never alone in Christ.  He is faithful and true.   It's not just a sappy saying to make somebody feel good.   It's His true nature, and it's real!!   And in the grief of no longer walking with Rusty this side of heaven, I've still been able to walk in joy, laugh with my friends and children, dream big dreams, and dare to go on adventures to discover the beautiful creation around the world.  It's also fun to meet folks along the way and hear a bit of their stories.

Hiking the Augusta Canal

And the next adventure will begin in 5 days!   It's one of my biggest undertakings yet.  We will be traveling from Georgia to Alaska and back.  We are wrapping up the few states we are missing besides Hawaii.   My crazy adventures began two years after Rusty passed, and I spend lots of time evenings and weekends planning and dreaming of what we will see and do.   After months of planning, I feel like this is one of my best planned trips yet.   

So please, come along with us.   I'd like to share how I come up with our crazy ideas, how we travel fairly cheap, what we eat and the list of dishes we are going to try in each state, where we hike, what animals we see, and so much more.  Until tomorrow, Michelle

“To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.”

― St. Augustine of Hippo