meaning in the mayhem

It’s a gray rainy New Year’s Eve here in Louisiana at the farm today.

But I’m loving it.  Family is packed into the living room watching the LSU v Louisville game with great enthusiasm.  It’s a lazy sort of day tailor made for a day full of hot stew and college football.

Yesterday, before the rain moved in, I vlogged another installment for Meaning in the Mayhem.  I’m taking you on a walking tour of a slice of the farm from the main house.  There’s the quiet of the outdoors mingled with the shouts from kids playing ball in the backyard.

I hope you have a beautiful New Year’s Eve wherever you are today.  2016 has been a bear of a year for us, and probably for a lot of America, but there’s been such goodness too.

I’m looking forward to what 2017 holds.  Peace and love from the Vincents out at the farm:

Y’all, I am finding lots of meaning in the mayhem this season but absolutely zero time to write. I need to pen a boundary boss installment about boundaries during the season’s madness.

This weekend was really wonderful though. Despite all we had to do, we laid low on Saturday.  Just as the weekend before I spent all Saturday morning with the little lady in her room cleaning and reorganizing and donating, this Saturday morning I did the same with the boys.

Aside from a run to the grocery store, we hung out in pjs and regrouped. Thursday had been a FULL day with them going to Fancy Nancy on a school theatre field trip, little bit acting after school in her mini-production of Annie, and a Thursday evening service project party with all our first grade friends.  Friday was only a half day of school, but it was busy!  I love school Christmas parties and so I volunteered to decorate and help out.  The kids had a blast and we’ve all really enjoyed this sweet group of kids (and parents) at our new school.

So Saturday left us all fried!!! Aside from laying low, we baked.  All the kids love to bake, so today’s installment of Meaning in the Mayhem is a glimpse into our flour-laden kitchen as the kids rolled sugar cookies for the next day.  Then, at dark, we drove around the neighborhood looking at the lights and sipping hot cocoa.

Sunday was FAR busier! After church wrapped up, we stayed on for lunch and another service project.  Daddy framed houses for Habitat for Humanity in the church parking lot while the rest of us worked on kid crews inside making fabric knot wreaths and building/painting birdhouses for all 46 houses in the Habitat neighborhood.

We only had a short time to clean up ourselves and the house before some of our dearest family friends came over for a low key Christmas evening. We had taco soup, it was COLD in Houston, and the grown ups visited while the kids decorated those Christmas cookies we’d just baked.  There were five kids and five awards: most icing (our kindergarten friend nailed it), most sprinkles (my eldest definitely killed it there), most original (our first grade buddy invented one cookie out of two), most festive (little lady with her use of snowflakes and candy canes), and best overall (our baby who made icing look like decorations).

It was such a good evening filled with exactly what Christmas is to me. Friends, family, joy, food, laughter, warmth, and fun.

So you get a little update to understand why I’ve been MIA and the latest installment of Meaning in the Mayhem for this year. Hope your week is filled with pockets of meaning and joy: