Lara got a lot of wonderful gifts, and I want to thank you (you know who you are) for getting Lara such nice gifts. But more importantly, I want to thank all of you for creating such warm and loving homes for Lara to visit over the holidays. She is very blessed; we all are!
Lara liked to open presents, and forseeing this, I went to the Dollar Tree, and purchased several gifts for her there. I spent little money as Lara never really cared what was inside the wrapping. Although by the end of Christmas, she learned to say, "Ohh!" and "Aww!" whenever she opened one. This is a fun age where you don't have to worry too much about the materialism of the holiday, although I suppose it's never too late to start. I hadn't thought much of it until I taught a Sunday School lesson the Sunday after Christmas.
I taught from Luke 18 wherein Jesus was asked by the rich man what he must do to live forever. Jesus later told him to sell all of his stuff and give it to the poor, which made the rich man very sad. The kids took turns telling me what they got for Christmas, and afterwards I told them the lesson meant they needed to get rid of all their Christmas presents-just to get their attention. Of course, after a game and explanation, I told them that it is okay for us to have stuff, but it is not okay for it to come before God and people. I said this over and over to them because I could feel that it was not sinking in. I became discouraged after awhile when I realized the children were more interested in talking about their Christmas presents than in hearing about the Bible, and I almost moaned out loud when a young girl actually came up to me after the lesson and asked if she could just listen to her brand new i Pod for the rest of class!! I know I live in a materialistic society, and I have written about that on my blog many times in the past. But to experience it in this way made me so sad-and I wanted to come home and throw away all of Lara's toys and teach her that this stuff doesn't matter. Of course, I'm not serious about doing that, and I know that the kids were just on a Christmas high. And that won't solve the problem anyway-like I told the kids, it's a matter of putting things before Christ, and for all of us, there's always something that we have to try to let go of.
All of this sort of brought on the realization that being a parent is a big job.
Dustin has been frustrated at me the last few days. He left for work tonight "Hmph!"ing at me. You see, Dustin has completed all of his master's classes and now must do his thesis. He has had serious motivation problems. Not that I blame him in the slightest; I feel quite sympathetic toward him. But something must be done, so I've been pushing him to work on it. He doesn't like me much for it, but that's okay with me. One of these days, his thesis will be done and we can go back to being a loving couple. :-)
Lara is delightful! Yesterday, she had a lot of restlessness about her, so we sat at the table and made bread-nothing fancy. In fact, it was the first time I made bread, and it was a simple recipe out of one of my teacher books. Lara loves to be involved. She wanted to do everything, and would repeat everything I said in perfect imitation: "1 teeeeaaaspoon of salt!" "2 CUPS of...flour!" She has a really particular way about her which is super cute. But you just have to see it to understand it. We haven't had any Terrible Two moments for quite some time, thankfully. She has been very good-natured and helpful. Yesterday was laundry day, and Lara would pick up the socks, put them on one of her little chairs, and walk them into the appropriate rooms. I think parenthood just gets easier as communiation progresses. Today, for instance, Lara picked up one of her sweaters, and said a full sentence, "Addy has one like it!" I find myself enjoying my time with her more and more now that we can really talk and interact. I need to stop and go to bed. I will post Christmas pictures later. 
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