Nothing puts me into the Christmas mood quite like listening to my children design and execute the outside decoration theme for the year. An unexpected blessing that came out of my husband\u2019s back problems two years ago was the handing over of the outdoor d\u00e9cor to our boys (who were 16 and 13 at the time). He sat in a wheelchair on the front porch and directed them. Last year, he handed it over to them completely. They could use everything we had, and we gave them $20 to buy whatever else they thought they needed. They came up with a cute design with our plastic penguin \u201cfishing\u201d. Then my brother donated extra supplies from his attic and they went to town. this year the boys \u201callowed\u201d their sister to help. All three are currently outside in the dark putting up lights, with Dad holding a flashlight and helping with plugging in cords.  I am listening to Christmas music on Pandora and cooking dinner.<\/p>\n

Life is rich and I am full to the brim with gratitude for the blessing of my husband and children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year’s design Nothing puts me into the Christmas mood quite like listening to my children design and execute the outside decoration theme for the year. An unexpected blessing that came out of my husband\u2019s back problems two years ago was the handing over of the outdoor d\u00e9cor to our boys (who were 16 and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7zbKo-MM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}