Not much happening in January

I realized that it's been more than a month since my last blog posting. That's because not much has happened in January. I have posted a few pictures from our air hockey tournament earlier this month at a friends house.

Chris

Christmas 2009

The Payne's had an enjoyable Christmas with both sides of the family. This year will be remembered as the Christmas that involved a lot of snow, and everyone being chauffeured up the hill to get to Rod & Sue's house. Below is a video of Levi reading the Christmas story and a link to some pictures from our Christmas. You may have to copy and paste the link into your web browser.

Chris

Pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=126281&id=513017606&l=c7edcc673b

Christmas Decorating and Concerts 2009

The last two weekends have been busy with Christmas decorating and Christmas concerts. We spent much of last Saturday decorating the house for Christmas, and on Sunday the kids had their Christmas concert at church. The video shows (with not the best quality) Josiah in the middle of the screen. The adult Christmas musical runs Thursday-Sunday and has been a lot of fun to be a part of. Enjoy the pics and video.

Chris

Snowball Fight

We had our first real snowfall of the winter this week. The kids and I decided to have a snowball fight.

Chris

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Thanksgiving Weekend 2009

The Payne's enjoyed a four day weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving in St. Paul, MN. Thanksgiving dinner consisted of the usual foods (turkey, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, pies, etc. and of course poppyseed bread). That same night we got some exciting news about a new addition to the family in the summer of 2010. Andy and Molly announced that they are expecting their first child, and needless to say everyone was very excited.
I spent Friday afternoon with Jonah at our 2nd annual MN Wild hockey game. The Wild won and we saw a hat trick. It was a great time. On Saturday afternoon Cari and the boys went to a model train museum with Andy and Molly. On Saturday night we went to a Mediterranean restaurant for dinner. Lots of different foods to experience. Much of it I'm still not sure what it was.

Enjoy the pics.

Chris

PS: Cheese Balls may be a new West/Payne Thanksgiving tradition. :)

Christmas Lights

Hanging Christmas lights outside? Yes, it was a first for the Payne family. As kids, Cari and I cannot remember ever having Christmas lights on the outside of our houses. (Although I vividly remember driving around town and looking at lights on other houses. Especially one of my great-uncles who only decorated one window with lights. We always gave him the award for 'Most Creative Christmas Lights')

After Josiah asked for about the 100th time about putting Christmas lights on the deck we decided to grant his request. His dream would be for us to put lights along the roof. For now, we'll just start with the deck.

Pictures are below.

Chris

Lights Out & a Bowl of Rice

There are times in life when we don’t realize what we have until you are without out them. As parents we try to teach our kids to be grateful for what they have. Whether it’s having a roof over our heads, food on the table, a loving family, etc. we want our kids to understand that many people in the world do not have all of the luxuries that we have. With that said we recently spent one evening without lights and by eating a very simple dinner.

Our dinner for the night consisted of a bowl of rice for each person by candlelight and flashlights. For the rest of the evening we left the lights off and continued to use candles and flashlights to light the house. With the TV off, the computer off, the video games off and everything else off we had an opportunity to talk, play games and share things that we were each grateful for.

As we explained to the kids, our experience was still very different than many in the world. Although we did not have a large meal, use lights or electronic entertainment for the night, we still had a pantry and refrigerator full of food if we needed it. We had medicine in the cabinets (which we actually needed: Benadryl), we had running water, a furnace and many other things that others in the world do not have.

The way that we view the world has changed since we began sponsoring our child through Compassion International. The sponsorship has given us an opportunity to see, that as people that have been blessed in abundance that we need to share that blessing with others. We pray daily for our Compassion child and the kids are reminded daily of our little girl in Thailand that we have the opportunity to support.

In the end I think this was a good experience for all. The thing that surprised me the most was that none of the kids complained about the simple meal of a bowl of rice. With four kids it seems like someone is always complaining about something at the dinner table.


Chris