My Christmas Epiphany

Nathan and I have been reading through an Advent devotional that Denver Seminary sends out every year. It's been preparing our minds for December 25th, the day that represents Christ's birth. The greatest gift that Nathan and I have ever received.

What I read today changed me and in turn I shared it with Nathan. Might I share it with you?

"First, our celebration reflects Christ when it minimizes self-enjoyment. In our culture, Christmas has becomes synonymous with materialistic self-indulgence. Our Christmas is joyous if our wants are satisfied and our desires gratified. In stark contract, self-enjoyment was not the dominant characteristic of our Savior's life. Self-denial was! His coming to our world and dwelling with us were acts of self-renunciation. We honor Him in celebration when we resist the pull of self-indulgence.

Second, a Christian that resembles Christ maximizes self-abasement. The coming of Christ to the earth was a costly journey. It involved self-demotion and self-condescension. His birth and life were marked be self-giving. What have we given up as we remember him?

Third, a Christ-like Christmas observance emphasizes the enhancement of others. Christmas has to do with the great exchange-a transaction carried out in our favor and Christ's disfavor! He, rich became poor, so that we, poor, may become rich! Who are we blessing by our celebration?"

Dr. Dieumeme Noelliste

I was convicted and in turn Nathan and I talked about how we want to be intentional as a family from this Christmas forward. So, a commitment has been made that we make public now. From this day forward we commit as a family to be all about giving on this day and never about receiving. We will not give family members wish-lists nor will we be asking our children what they want for Christmas. We will be asking them "what do you want to give?". WIth our children we will limit our gift giving to three gifts which reflect the number of the Magai's gifts - an Ornament for their future family's tree, a book that has some sort of significance to us that we would like to share with them and lastly a toy or other item that we as their parents decide to bless them with. Of course, as we continue to get to know them better the better we'll know what gift is best without them having to tell us. We also want to make every effort each year to give to others that can not give in return. Every year we'll pray that God will make it evident to us who those people are.

This might seem so simple yet to me it's profound. Christmas was always about a wish list, Santa, what I was getting, etc. and every day this month I've been praying that God would reveal to our family what traditions he would like us to set in honor of him. Today, it was answered. He is faithful.

You may think it's silly that I blogged this commitment to the public but for me, when I say something out loud for others to hear, I feel accountable. It puts in me this ability to never look back and to only step forward.

Thanks for listening!

Merry Christmas friends and family! You are dear to us!

-The Jones

Twins?

Which one is Silas? Which one is Harrison?

Crazy how much they look alike!

I'll blog more once the Christmas to-do list is shorter.

Meet Silas Nathaniel Jones

Silas Nathaniel Jones was born at 5:28am on Saturday October 29th at Littleton Adventist Hospital. He was 19.25 inches long and 6lbs 12oz.

Sorry this post has taken so long, the transition to two, one infant and a toddler has ben a bit harder than we expected.

Our labor story - On Friday afternoon I had a Dr. 's appointment where they checked to see if there were any signs of the baby coming sooner than later. To spare you all the nitty gritty details the Dr. said, if you start having contractions be sure to head to the hospital sooner than later.

After the appointment I started to have contractions but didn't begin to time them until Nate gave Harrison a bath and I had time to lay down which is when I found out that my contractions were 3 minutes apart which meant: I NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL. Your told to go when they are five minutes a part or less. Two minutes typically means baby is coming, SOON. Even though I wish I could say the baby came right away and without much pain, by the time we ran around the house hectically packing up last minute things then drove Harrison to a friend's house, my contractions had slowed down. The Dr. asked if I wanted to head back home or finish it through and I said finish so she broke my water and Silas came about 5 hours later. Dr. Abman was awesome and the nursing staff was so helpful. Even the anesthesiologist was great. He was thorough at communicating the process with me which I really appreciated!

Harrison is such a sweet big brother! He's giving mommy and daddy a hard time but he's very gentle with Silas and runs to us quickly to tell us when he's crying.

We are adjusting. I'm exhausted but reminding myself that this is just a season and I'm continuing to pray for strength for us all. My mom is here right now and she's even exhausted. The three of us are on duty - me nursing for 45 minutes about every 2 hours, Nathan trying to get his work done, mom on Harrison duty. All of taking turns trying to get Silas to sleep. I don't know how we're going to do it once my mom leaves but Nathan keeps reminding me that millions of parents have done this before and have survived. We covet your prayers.

Love, us

First Snow of the Season

Harrison was so excited to wake up to several inches if not a foot of snow this morning. I thought I would share his joy with you and put some pictures and videos up.

All ready to go!

Helping Daddy!

Now for the real action: sledding! I hope you all can see this video. If you can't see it in the e-mail go to the actual blog at nathanlibbybentley.blogspot.com.

Hope you all had a wonderful Wednesday!

Today at the park

38 weeks pregnant and a morning at the park enjoying time with Harrison.

The Basement

It's almost done! Nathan still has to put some trim on the windows and around the doors but for the most part the basement is almost finished. Our goal was to finish it before the baby arrived so that there's a place for family to stay and an office for Nathan to work in. Currently his office is in the living room and once the baby comes it's going to be hard to get work done there. We've almost hit our goal! Probably by this weekend we'll move furniture in. Woohoo!

What was:

What is:

Those are the stairs from the living room/laundry area to the basement.

The office cubby.

What was:

What is:

Those are two closets on the left.

The living room area.

What was:

What is:

Note the new lighting and ceiling.

Doorway into bedroom.

What was:

What is:

There will be a closet door put in on the right and Nathan is brainstorming how to make the crawl space door a little more eye appealing.

Here are a few pictures of how it got to this point:

Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the framing that took place before putting the walls up.

We're thankful for Nathan's parents who came out to help frame and drywall the basement. We paid someone to mud, tape and texture the walls. Nathan then painted, we got carpet laid and now he's working on the trim as fast as he can. All of this happened in just the last month and a half while Nathan worked full time, traveled to Portland and Seattle and still spent time with Harrison and I on the weekends. We had one hiccup with some plumbing that took some time to fix. Nathan fixed it all on his own. The whole basement is amazing. I'm so proud of him!

Have a great rest of your week!

Love -Us

"Nesting"

I'm making this short, sweet and full of pictures before I go into labor (not really). Today I hit my "everything must get done because this baby could come at any moment" obsessive point. I had a few contractions which lead to packing our bags, moping the floor, hand washing the dishes that didn't fit in the dishwasher, finished all our laundry and asked Nathan to clean the bathroom... Now I'm blogging. They call this phase "nesting". No, really.

The baby's room is ready:

The picture in the middle of the wall is whited out because it's still a secret. It's the first letter of the baby's name made out of crayons in a shadow box. It turned out pretty good but you can't see it until the baby is here. Sorry.

The mobile to the right we made too!

The closet doors are up but we still have some trim to put on the top.

My mom cross stitched this for me when I was a baby. She passed it along for this little guy. I love the prayer!

The book cases below are actually $2.50 spice racks from IKEA that we spray painted.

It's been fun to be home and figure out ways to save money and be crafty to decorate his room.

Last weekend we went to a cornmaze with some good friends of ours. The boys loved picking up the corn and walking around.

We tried for a family picture but the sun was in our eyes. Well not Nathan's, ha.

Our neighborhood is stunning right now! The streets are lined with gold and red. Our yard is filled with leaves. Harrison thought he would help rake.

This might be his last picture as an only child. Look at that face! Irresistible!

I'll blog some of our basement progress next.

Love - Us

Fun Weekends

The last two weekends have been filled with family fun. We thought we'd get a few more events in just as a family only with Harrison before baby number two makes his appearance.

Two weekends ago we surprised Harrison by going to an air-show at Ft. Carson just past Colorado Springs.

I laugh everytime someone tries to carry something for me since I'm pregnant. It's very courtious of them but in reality, I carry a 24 pound toddler everywhere :)

Here's our little pilot (the irony is that I hate flying if I haven't said that before...)

Harrison's favorite part was watching the skydivers come down. It scared him at first but after a few of them landed he started to cheer and get excited: "they fall down!" His favorite phrase was said about 50 times, "right there!" Just picture him pointing frantically at the skydivers.

He gets so expressive at times and then most of the time he just quietly talks that I often find myself asking him to speak up. Which brings up another interesting fact about Harrison. He almost always says please, thank you, your welcome and even bless you when someone sneezes. The other day he said it to Bentley. We're working on excuse me, he learned move from me telling Bentley to move all the time. So we're trying to cut back on the "move!" and work more on the "excuse me please". He also yells at Bentley "settle down!". I laugh every-time.

The action shots don't really do the air-show justice so I'll spare those for now.

Last weekend was our annual trip to Rock Springs pumpkin patch. I guess not many people go in the beginning of September because the place was empty on a Saturday but there was an abundance of pumpkins. We wanted to go early incase Tiny Jones #2 makes an early appearance which I'm sure is just hopeful thinking. Speaking of which, with Harrison I never could make out body parts that moved. This one, I know his boney little heel is jabbing me in the left side while his little butt is trying to push it's way out the top of my stomach every-time he kicks.

Again it's very hard to get a two year old to take a good picture :)

He loved walking around and helping daddy pick out a pumpkin. We/he picked out one for him and one for us.

Found it!

Nathan couldn't make it to the pumpkin in time and I just had to take the shot since Harrison was actually smiling :)

Now, just for fun, a quick comparison, just look at what a difference a year can make.

Little boy to little man (97th percentile for height). I know it's cliche but it's true, they really do grow up so quickly. Right now I'm praying through my worries about being a mom of two. Being an only child I never lacked attention from my family... There are lots of negatives to that but there are positive too and at this point it's hard for me to imagine having to split the time we spend with Harrison between him and his little brother. I know, it'll be good, in the long run but now I'm just praying that God would prepare my heart.

Right now our favorite part of the day is getting Harrison ready for bed and reading stories at night. We read two books, his toddler Bible and then we pray something short like "Jesus loves me, thank you Jesus, Amen". Then he asks to cuddle which includes laying down next to him for 5 minutes or so and then kisses and sleep. It's such a sweet precious time and he is such a sweet precious boy for us at that moment. Well, all day, but especially at that moment. His favorite bible stories right now include anything with animals and anything with babies so we read the creation story, the story of Noah and the story of baby Moses. He likes repetition so we haven't moved on from there quite yet :)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Nathan is currently painting the second coat on our basement. We had some issues come up with a pipe downstairs so once that's fixed and the walls are painted Nathan will start installing the doors and the trim. Then it's finished with the carpet. We're really hoping for it all to be done before the baby gets here. We are 4 weeks away!

XOXOX