and order all things far and nigh;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel,
to thee shall come Emmanuel!
O come, o come, Thou Lord of might,
who to thy tribes on Sinai's height
in ancient times did give the law,
in cloud, and majesty, and awe.
O come, Thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heav'nly home,
make safe the way that leads on high,
that we no more have cause to sigh.
O come, Thou Dayspring from on high,
and cheer us by thy drawing nigh;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night
and death's dark shadow put to flight.
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.
Gaude! Gaude!
Emmanuel,
nascetur pro te Israel!
While we await Christ's coming in the season of Advent, we reflect on many of the words you hear playing in these songs. We also pray for our hearts to prepare to receive Him, lowly, lying in a manger, simple, poor, yet clothed with the richness of a KING! Our King! This is a very special time of waiting, hoping, praying, and hopefully someday making many traditions together with young children (like a Jesse Tree, Advent Calendar and helping them to remember their charity in all things by laying a piece of hay on the small pile that baby Jesus will lie in...the more love we share the softer His manger!)...
Of course while we wait, we also know a GREAT feast will be upon us soon too. So we prepare for Christmas, but try not to celebrate yet :) Together we make a great team. There is lots of work to do on the outside and inside of the house to prepare for Christ's coming! How symbolic of the work necessary to prepare our hearts too.
Gary put much hard work into this year's lights display (something he hasn't been able to do in three years!) He has been doing this since he was very young and really enjoys it. He has fond memories of helping his Dad do their lights display-which is also beautiful-and still gets displayed every year! Gary makes it look very easy. (All I had to do was the hold the ladder :) )
And the result is magical! I am so proud of him. We were blessed to win a town contest. First prize was $300 to Publix. Yay!!
He even incorporated our projector this year. He had a movie of Santa unpacking gifts and eating cookies that projected through the front window. And if you tune your radio station to Gary's local station...you could hear Santa's bells and his "Ho ho ho" and even a playlist of wonderful Christmas music.
While I couldn't do much to help on the outside I really enjoyed decorating our home inside. Last year at this time we were getting ready for our wedding and then on our honeymoon. Our first Christmas together has already been so special.
Our homemade advent wreath...
Our Christmas table
where we can enjoy delicious meals like this (half-eaten) homemade mac-n-cheese!
Gary's family has a neat tradition of having two trees...usually one with colored lights and one with white lights. We found this one in the garage. We forgot we had it (thanks, Mom and Dad!) and it's neat that we have both too.
The Holy Family (a wedding gift from Mom and Dad Spenik) and a delicious bowl of winter nuts!
Holly and bows!
A beautiful wedding gift from Alex and Mary. Our first Nativity Scene :)
And finally, our tree. We found one quite affordable at Lowe's. It was so nice to finally be able to use so many of the decorations we had found previous years but never had the chance to see together in our home until this year!
