How good a Christmas Parent are you?

So, there we were driving over to Nana and Granda's for Christmas, I turn to Liz and ask, "???". The answer to the question made us think about what awful parents we are, and left us hoping we aren't the only ones. To find some fellow sufferers, we thought it might launch our own interactive quiz. A small prize to the first person to guess which Christmas parenting faux pas was ours. Another one to the person with the best (or worst) example of Christmas parenting (in the opinion of the esteemed judges)

Tim and Liz C

Plays, Balls and Weddings

Thought I'd better get round to reporting on our latest activities before we go off for Christmas (starting tomorrow at the parents.) Last week was a mad rush of kids parties and plays, with the Christmas Ball on thursday night. Tabitha was an elephant (of course!!! :os) in her play 'A present for the Baby.' She did a fantastic job and loved every minute.

Nathaniel had his toddler group Christmas party also on the Thursday which was fun, quite nice just to sit and relax where for the past few years I've been rushing round like a headless chicken at such things. (couldn't compare to Chimps though I'm afraid ;o)) My mum came to stay in order to babysit for the ball, which was lovely. The dinner was nice, tho we were all put on tables with lots of people we didn't know, but was good in the end, and the disco was great fun, lots of good cheese in there, all the usual suspects. Particularly enjoyed dancing to 'Cotton Eyed Joe' with Maria, mum of Emily who goes to Tabitha's dancing class - the girls do a dance to this song every week so of course we had to replicate it. Was very funny. Honestly. The chapel looked wonderful and a good night was had by all. The blokeys scrubbed up pretty well in their tuxedos and the ladies looked pretty good too.

Friday was Peaches party and nativity. I was working as all hands were needed. Party was fun, then came getting about 12 toddlers and babies into the nativity clothes. Hmmm, interesting. Quite a few protestors at this point. My son declared that he would not wear his headdress. However with the blackmail technique 'Nana will love it' applied he changed his mind. We had a few reluctant sheep....those hats were no way going on. All mummies and daddies and extra people crowded into peaches and the play was on. It was very cute, as nursery nativities are. Nathaniel spent most of it admiring himself (in said headdress) in the unforunately positioned mirror on the outside of his 'inn' (him being the innkeeper. He said his line, and added another one (hello Nana!) and did very well. The reluctant sheep did not wear their sheep hats, but looked very cute nontheless, and the angel gabriel decided that standing still by Mary was far too boring. All in all it went very well. Here's my little innkeeper!



After those busy few days we had an even busier weekend. We popped down to Luton for Richard and Sarah's wedding. We visited a few people first on Saturday - Catherine and Anthony, the Masons and the Lanes and Ann. Was fantastic to see everyone, a lovely surprise as well when we went to Caroline and Johns for lunch and they'd got Allison and David round too - fab to see them. :o) The kids had a wonderful time. The wedding was beautiful, kids completely hyper - Tabitha catching up with Daniel. Very late night - sat down to eat at 7.30 and finished eating at 10 then we joined in the ceilidh til 11 when the kids were about to drop. Stayed at the Brewers in their lovely home and went to St Mary's in the morning. Wonderful to see everyone again, but very very tiring, after lunch the kids were dropping and so we came home. All in all a great week, and my health stood up to it all which I am so grateful for. :o)

Nuclear Family evil?

There we were, sat in an ethics seminar a couple of weeks ago, when one of my fellow students came out with, "The nuclear family is one of the greatest evils in society today". There was a stunned silence, but when we'd chance to think about it, we saw what he meant, and the concept kept coming up as we considered various ethical dilemmas.

There is a great emphasis on the individual and self sufficiency in western society today, and this has infected our ideas about family as well.

Married couples are led to believe that they should be each other's all-in-all, best friend and should be able to provide for all each other's needs. This leads to huge pressures being bought to bear on these relationships, which might actually be healthier (and more likely to survive) for a strong network of supporting friends, and the realisation that no one person is going to fulfil all the emotional needs of any other person.

Parents are led to believe that they should be able to bring up their kids on their own, and, because of the geographical dispersal of families, often don't have extended family to support them. Very often we also believe that we have the right to bring up our kids as we want to. We react very negatively if anyone dares to comment on our parenting. We have lost community norms in the raising of our children, a vicious circle that leads to increasing cynicism and lack of acceptance of authority.

When we were thinking through our reactions to various ethical case studies, a common reaction was that, whilst we knew we had to deal with the situation as presented, if we wanted to stop these type of situations occuring, one of the most important things would be to develop healthy communities.

It's all to easy to bemoan the break up of the marriage of the couple married in our church a couple of years ago, but unless we have been intentional about creating community around them, and supporting them in their marriage, we have failed.

It's easy to condemn a pregnant school girl, but unless we have developed a community in which she knows that she will be supported and loved in the raising of the the child, we have no right to comment on her decisions regarding the pregnancy. This is particularly true if the community has done nothing to counteract the cultural emphasises on sex as a leisure activity or as the only valid expression of romantic love.

Community and relationship is at the heart of our God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But that three-in-one relationship is not a nuclear, inward looking one. It is a creative, outlooking, indrawing one. That is the type of community we need.

TimC

And so the end is near....

Apologies for the lapse in posting, I do have a couple of things I want to post about (come back later for, "the nuclear family is the greatest evil in contemporary western culture") and will do so early next week, just been a bit buried for the last 10 days.
Anyway, all lectures of term now lectured, Christmas ball danced, and just the assignments to be writ. Just a little bit daunting to think that we are now a sixth of the way through the course and being unleashed on the big wide world.
This morning in Chapel we were invited to reflect on the term, what we might have learnt and what has had an impact on us. I remember really enjoying the first five weeks, feeling I'd come home. Then it got tougher as illness hit the household, and I got stressed again as we had to work round that. In fact I did very little work outside class for about four weeks, and none of the extra reading I'd had time to do in the first five weeks. But in the middle of that we had the "Together" event, where we had the privilege of enabling families to worship and experience God's love and power. I may always struggle to hold onto joy when Liz is ill, but I know that God is faithful and does see us through, even if it isn't in the way we expect.

Together - again!

Well much of this weekend was taken up by the Together event we've been planning for a while with James, Lou and Gaz. Friday night was spent decorating the chapel and getting very annoyed by the lack of power points in said venue, most of them being unreachable among the rafters, so we couldn't put up a load of fairy lights as planned. However Lou and I did have fun draping lots of funky material round the chapel and playing with the lights. :o) Little things. The band rehearsed and we had a good pray.
So Saturday, Tim went up early to set up/rehearse and I took the kids up about an hour early to set up the common room for the tea. It went brilliantly (imho, lol), we had a good turnout and lots of positive feedback. God turned up! The band were marvellous and really rocked, the kids were well involved, dancing, running round madly etc, and even the adults got in there with the actions etc. Bit in the middle was a kind of prayer activity where the kids prayed for their parents and vice versa, they were fantastic and really got into it, amazing to see. Everyone then wrote prayers, stuck them in a balloon and had fun batting the balloons around (and bursting them ;o)) We had other stuff, game etc, and lots of bouncy songs. Especially loved the fiddle solo in Come on and Dance. Tim and i were doing the actions at the front and endeavouring to be bouncy all the way through and I have not felt so completely exhausted in a loooong time. Too much exercise for me!! Enjoyed it lots though. Tabitha was in heaven, just her thing, and asked when the next one was. :o) Nathaniel asked why he wasn't going to his group. (he loves his butterflies group on a Thursday night.)
All in all couldn't have gone better, I think, and certainly looking to making it a regular thing, there seems a lot of interest in that, so hopefully termly, we shall see.
Spent Sunday winding down, but still completely creamed today, not quite well yet so must take it easy over the next week - next week will be manic with kids Christmas plays, working a couple of mornings, toddlers Christmas party, college Christmas ball, and not to mention trying to finish shopping etc. aaagh!!

Go tell the world.

It's taken a while for me to get round to blogging about it, but we had another class act for college lecture last Thursday. Gillian Oliver is the Communications bod (not sure of job exact job title) at the Church of England head office. Her background is in editorial positions in TV news broadcasting. In short, I was left reassured about the quality of the comms material due to be coming out of central office if people of her calibre are involved. If you have any opportunity to hear her talk, or get on any of the comms training, then I highly recommend it.

We were also given a sneak preview of the online Advent Calendar that eventually launched yesterday. Looks good, take a peek.

TimC