Nerf Wars

Nerf wars were all the rage when the kids were here.  There was a light of hooting and hollering and running in and out of the house!

              Wearing goggles to protect eyes.

Going over the rules of  how to fight fair

Look at Jill!

   

load 'em up! 

pockets full of bullets

Almost 2 weeks out, I'm still finding bullets left behind! 

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?  You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.  When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."  James 4:1-3

Well, luckily, our fights were just for fun!

Games

We do enjoy games when we get together!

 This is a Sequence board that my parents made from a real deck of cards.  It is such a fun game!

My friend, Kathy Trim, had written about Christmas Bingo.  I found one on Pinterest, copied it and made our own.  We used chocolate chips for the chips!  When we bingoed, they got to eat all the chips!

Besides board games, we played other kinds of games too!

Like mad libs. 

 The children have to come up with adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs and from these random answers, Jill told a funny Christmas story.

The kids did a balance act 

and giggly tummies.

 Hide and seek with candy canes

There was lots of laughter and fun!

Open the gift

Wasn't it fun to open the gifts under the tree at Christmas?

There were practical gifts like a housecoat that keeps you warm and snuggly.

 a sun lamp to keep one's spirit from getting down (since she now lives in Wisconsin!)

a toasty warm down jacket to keep him warm

and there were gifts that just brought pure joy!


There were gifts that will take hours of challenge and patience (paint by number) and when finished will be a nice wall hanging

Alexa will provide us with answers to questions we have

 my new camera lens will provide me with fun pictures I can enjoy!

But what if we just sat around the tree just admiring the gifts and didn't open them?

So many people do just that.  Not with Christmas gifts.  I'm pretty sure everyone tears those open!

But there is no greater gift one can receive than Christ Himself.  God's gift of Himself to us is the BEST gift!  "For God SO LOVED the world that He gave His one and only Son."  John 3:16

Not to mention

                         eternal life, 
                              joy,
                  peace instead of worry, 
   freedom from the bondage of sin, 
                  the riches of His kindness, 
His presence each day so we don't have to 
        walk this life alone.  
                 The Bible - His very Words to us!

                     There are many gifts He offers us! 

We don't have to earn this gift by being good people or doing religious activities to appease God.  We need only accept the gift.  

An unopened gift under the tree does not do us any good.  Deciding to reject the BEST Gift from God has eternal consequences.   Open your heart to Him!

"Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!"  
2 Corinthians 9:15