El Paso trip: December 5

Jesse has to be to church very early on Sunday mornings. He works the sound system there and has to help the praise and worship team do their sound checks, etc.
So we arrived THREE hours before the actual worship service began. Three hours is a long time to entertain three active children before church. I packed my backpack with as much quiet stuff as I could fit, and we found a classroom where we could lay it all out and decide what to do first!
We colored lots and lots of pictures together ~ thankfully, all three children really love to sit and do any kind of artwork available. But after about 45 minutes, they'd had enough!
We wandered the hallways and checked the building out from every possible angle. You know how curious kids are! I tried to get all three of them to smile nicely beneath the Christmas tree in the foyer, but I never did get a good snapshot of the three of them together. While we were walking around the building (inside and out), the kiddos spied a playground across the parking lot from the church. We inquired about it and one of the fellows said it belonged to the school that used the church building during the week. It was all padlocked so that no one could enter. But we were offered the key! So we took it ...
and played for at least another hour outside ...
in the beautiful sunshine ...
Matthew and Emma served me a delicious "stone and rock" breakfast ...
Christopher ran around like a wild Indian ...
Matthew played like there was NO tomorrow ...
And I enjoyed myself hugely watching them have so much fun.


Such beautiful little grandchildren! They really do have a good time together.
This contraption cracked me up ... they had a great time on it.
Jesse finally came and retrieved us from the playground just in time for church to start ...
This is Sunshine Community Church in El Paso. It's a very nice place of worship. The school-aged children participate in the singing and then are dismissed to their separate classes. I attended Emma's second grade class because when I went to drop her off, she was the only girl with six boys ~ so I stayed. The teacher, Mrs. Fernandez, taught the story of Jesus healing the 10 men who had leprosy. She did such a good job and was able to get the children to interact with the story really well.
Everyone was taking family pictures around the Christmas tree in the foyer of the church. The pastor's wife was directing the photography and taking many of the pictures herself. I just sneaked this one in on the side ...
We were quite excited to celebrate our early Christmas once we got home. I had made photo books for each of the little ones ... kind of a personal love story about memories made throughout the years with them. I tried to design each book around the meaning of their names. "Emma" means "strength" ~ and it always bugs Emma when I tell her that because she wishes her name meant "Princess." So in her book, I talked about the fact that she could be a STRONG and KIND princess and that she could do anything "with the strength that comes from the LORD." Matthew's name means: "Gift of the LORD." So I talked to him about the fact that he is a treasure, a special present, and that God loves him very much. Christopher means "Christ bearer" and so I told him that if he made Jesus the King of his life, Jesus would come and live with him forever. I made these little books through Snapfish ~ they were very fun to make and now that I've tried it, I would like to do more!
We got Di and Emma some little kitchen utencils that had little piggy faces on them ~ both Di and Emma love pigs ... they seemed to like these very much!
We got the boys a whole bunch of fun Hot Wheels stuff ... they are probably the best-priced gift in America ... so fun to play with, so easy to assemble ... endless fun.
We were able to have my niece, Shelley, autograph one of her Klinger books for Jesse's family. It's a beautiful book for military families ... and how special that our Shelley illustrated it!
Emma was most pleased with the little rubber shaped bracelets and rings we bought her! She was SO delighted with them! Look at her beautiful smile.
Matthew was just pleased to have some new cars to play with. He was especially delighted with the color-changer cars. If you sprayed really cold water on them, they would completely change color! If you sprayed HOT water on them, they would change back. Matthew sprayed everything in sight!
We had four Hot Wheel sets to assemble ... and again, we were SO thankful that assembling is Jesse's forte' ... so we got them all set up to go!
See? Matthew is holding the squirt bottle filled with water to "wash" the cars and change their colors. Matthew never got tired of spraying water ... EVERYWHERE!
I knew Jesse would get a bang out of these kits ... we had some very similar ones when he was young and all of us played with them endlessly!
In the dollar section at Michael's (I LOVE that store) I found some little wooden ornaments that could be colored with markers and decorated to hang on a tree ... so we did some of those together.
Emma picked out the nativity ornament and really enjoyed coloring it in.
We had gotten her a marker set with to go with a stencil kit for designing pretty clothes ... it's hard for me to describe, but I think Emma will enjoy all of the different styles of clothing she can put together with her kit.
Oh! There is a new member of the Pahman household ... NOT a new grandbaby ... but a new kitten by the name of Belle. She is really a beautiful little kitty and so much fun to play with. And we did a lot of that ... we played away our entire Sunday. Diana made us a nice chicken dinner and then the kiddos had to shower and get ready for school the next day ...