The Big White Farmhouse

A super quick post today!  My teens have been invited to a few parties this month that have included a White Elephant Exchange.  The limit is always around $5-$10 and I find it tricky to find something neutral enough to please most kids, but also something that’s not complete junk.  (Typical me, over-thinking everything.)  My husband and oldest son came up with this idea and we’ve run with it!  They picked up three “Mega Candy Tubes” of various candies and then packaged them to look like dynamite.  (The tag says, “Hope your Christmas is a blast!”)  It’s been a huge hit.

(My apologies for using the same photo, two posts in a row!  I’m losing some “Advent at the Farmhouse” steam.)

I just finished reading Wisdom from the Lives and Letters of St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane Frances de Chantal by Louise Perrotta and really enjoyed the passages written by the two saints.  Today I’d like to share one section from Saint Francis de Sales that really spoke to my sometimes-prone-to-anxiety heart:

I recommend to you holy simplicity.  Focus on what is in front of you and not on those far-off dangers you see…To you they look like armies, but they are only willow branches, and while you are looking at them you may take a false step.  Let us have a firm basic intention to serve God all our life and with all our heart.  Beyond that, let us have no anxiety about tomorrow (cf. Matthew 6:34).  Let us think only of doing well today.  When tomorrow arrives, it will in turn become today and we can think about it then.  Here again we must have great confidence and acceptance of God’s providence.  We must provide ourselves with only enough manna for each day (cf. Exodus 16:16-21).  And we must not doubt that God will rain down more manna on us tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and all the days of our pilgrimage. – page 106

A simple, ordinary day in mid-December. Some highlights: cinnamon rolls with breakfast as a belated St. Lucy feast day celebration.  Getting out little décor pieces and figuring out where they should go.  Laundry…always laundry.  More gingerbread men decorating with the littlest kids.  Finishing up my book club book.  Feeling tired, but grateful.

P.S. This morning, it was about 20-something degrees out and we had to move the pigs to new pasture.  This is always a family affair as we move the hot wire, bring breakfast and generally keep the pigs distracted until we’re all set up.  I didn’t get a photo of myself, but this meme is eerily accurate and cracked me up: