Merry Christmas!!!

     Our holiday plans include Sunday morning church, then having friends over for a traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner (which I’m not cooking – hooray!), dinner on Christmas Day at a family’s house from the church, and then a three day trip north to an indoor water park!  Meanwhile, we’ve been decorating our tree (everyone here dresses the tree on Christmas Eve, but we decided we’d finally waited long enough), drinking eggnog and Christmas caroling at every chance.  What an amazing story – that the God of All willingly made Himself into a man, with all the helplessness and dependency that that included.  And all so that one day He could die on a cross for me, for my sins.  I keep thinking of things from Mary’s perspective.  How strange it must have all been for her!  Well, happy holidays to you all – may the story of the birth of Christ be as new and amazing to you as the first time you heard it!   

Maia’s 3rd Birthday

Maia turned 3 in November, so here are some highlights of the fun!        Musical Maia tries out her new keyboard…

  Happy Birthday, Maia!

Back to bloggin

After a month or so break from blogging, I’m back.  I really was enjoying myself before the break, but life got busy, and when things get busy I guess I don’t turn to writing for relaxation.  But I apologize for the shortage of updates on the little Layer girls.  That was cruel.  So, to bring you up to date on the girls’ recent activities:   Mikaela is preparing for her big debut as angel in the preschool Christmas program, got her hair cut at a salon for the first time, and got her ears pierced this week.  She recently received a load of dress-up clothes from her Grammy Layer and decided that maybe she should invite all her preschool girlfriends over for a dress up party.  Great idea, I thought!  The ear piercing was quite an adventure!  She reeeeally wanted to get earrings, so I agreed that we would do it for a surprise for her dad (he was indeed surprised).  But after the first ear got pierced she started to cry and changed her mind.  Meanwhile the little Polish lady was trying to convince her that it hadn’t hurt after all, and Maia was crying and yelling in English at the lady “I don’t want you to do that to my Mikaela!  Mikaela doesn’t want you to do that!!”  But after a few minutes we all calmed down and she agreed to have the second ear pierced.  After 15 minutes she was pain-free and they look beautiful!  And what has Maia been up to?  Hmmm, Maia managed to spread almost a whole bag of powdered sugar throughout the house, cut off huge chunks of her beautiful curls, and shatter a glass jar full of all her tiny hair pretties.  She’s also learning new words in Polish every day, starting to remember her English letters and doing an inCREDible job of coloring within the lines.  She also got her hair cut at the salon because I had no idea what to do with it now that most of the top is so short.  But she admits to everyone how naughty she was and when prompted she’ll repeat that, no, she’ll never cut her own hair again.  My little beauties.  As soon as I can figure out what’s wrong with the camera, I’ll get a recent picture up.  Have a great day, everyone!