The Gift of Gifts

We had our church small group Christmas party last night, and Terrie read the following passage from the book "Valley of Vision". It is very appropriate for the Christmas season.

O Source of all Good,
What shall I render to Thee for the gift of gifts,
Thine own dear Son, begotten, not created,
my Redeemer, Proxy, Surety, Substitute,
His self-emptying incomprehensible,
His infinity of love beyond the heart's grasp.

Herein is wonder of wonders:
He came below to raise me above,
He was born like me that I might become like Him.

Herein is love;
when I cannot rise to Him He draws near on wings of grace,
to raise me to Himself.

Herein is power;
when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart
He united them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created.

Herein is wisdom;
when I was undone, with no will to return to Him,
and no intellect to devise recovery,

He came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost,
as man to die my death,
to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
to work out a perfect righteousness for me.

O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds,
and enlarge my mind;
let me hear good tidings of great joy,
and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore,
my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose,
my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father,
place me with ox, donkey, camel, goat,
to look with them upon my Redeemer's face,
and in Him account myself delivered from sin;
let me with Simeon clasp the new-born Child to my heart,
embrace Him with undying faith,exulting that He is mine and I am His.

In Him Thou hast given me so much that heaven can give no more.

Arthur Bennett, ed. Valley of Vision (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), 16.

A Little Holiday Cheer

This website is absolutely hilarious. Click below to see what I mean:

Mattie, Sean, Andrew, and Michael dancing as elves.

Michael and his quadruplet brothers dancing as elves.

Sarah, Mary, and two of their friends dancing as elves.

The webpages may be a little slow to load. So just give it a minute to completely load. Enjoy!

Christmas Tree Decorating Party

One thing about our family, we love to have a party. Any excuse to have a party is fine by us. Birthdays, Anniversaries, Ground Hog Day, whatever. So in this spirit, we have a party for decorating our Christmas Tree. Because my vacation starts December 17th through the end of the year, and since Michael and Andrew are In Orlando, we decided to have the tree in Orlando this year. So we came over this weekend to celebrate Sarah's 16th birthday (more on that later), and to have our annual Christmas Tree decorating party. Terrie makes her world-famous punch, the kids bake cookies, and we break out the snacks. All the while we throw the ornaments on the tree, and dance the night away. Well we decided to do this shindig in Orlando this year, since we'll be over here for most of the month anyway.

This year, we did something a little different. We decoarated Mom. We call it the Terrie Tree. See for yourself:

Also, here's a video of the kids dancing to the little holiday classic, "Up On The Rooftop". It's pretty funny.

Happy 12th Birthday Claire!

Sunday, December 2nd, was Claire's 12th birthday. We inch ever so closely to another teenager. Yikes! We already have 5 teenagers in the family! But alas, when Claire becomes a teenager, Michael will move out of the teens, into the twenties. I am getting so old!

Anyway we spent Sunday afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese with everyone and a couple of Claire's friends. They had a great time playing the games to get little prizes. So here's how it works: Dad works and earns money, then he gives money to CEC for pizza and tokens. Tokens allow you to play games, and earn tickets. Tickets are turned back in for little credit slips. These slips are then turned into the prize desk for little carnival prizes. I guess we could have streamlined the whole process by just taking my money straight to the prize desk and getting prizes. But then, we wouldn't have enjoyed the fun of CEC's, now would we have? Here's a few more pics:

The First Annual Thanksgiving Day Henderson Girls Pie Bake Off!

Thanksgiving night, we had our first annual pie bake off, between all the girls, Mom, and Nanny (Terrie's mom.) The judges were Me, Michael, Andrew, Sean, and Granny (my Mom.) We had Pumpkin, Blueberry, Banana Cream, Ice Cream, and 2 Apple pies to taste, inspect, and judge. It was very difficult to select the winner, but we had to do our duty, and narrow the field down to 3. Here are the official results from the "The First Annual Thanksgiving Day Henderson Girls Pie Bake Off!":

	Claire Henderson with a lucious Apple Pie!
	Anna Henderson with a delicious and wonderful Ice Cream Pie!
	Mattie Henderson with a Scumpdilicous Apple Pie made completely from scratch!

Here are some more pictures from this monumental event:

The judges hard at work!	Scoring the entries.
All the contestants.	Everyone enjoying the pies.
Claire and Michael	Michael ('nuff said)

PreVisor Announces Acquisition of CraftSystems, Inc.

The company I have been working at for the past three and a half years, CraftSystems, was aquired today by one of the largest companies in our field, PreVisor. It's been in the works for quite a while, and was finalized today. Click the title of this blog entry for the official press release. It will be a little different for me, in that my immediate manager will be in Atlanta, GA, at the corporate headquarters. I will still be working in the Bradenton office, and after we move to Orlando, I will be able to work from home (what a blessing!) We had a meet-and-greet with the CEO of PreVisor, and he was very nice and welcoming to us as new employees. It will be a little sad not working for Larry Craft anymore. He will finally be able to be fully retired now, which is good for him. He has worked so hard for the past 29 years to make CraftSystems what it is today. He and his wife Carol have been very kind to us as a family. I wish them all the best in their retirement years.

Befores and Afters on the house renovations...

As promised, and I know you were really looking forward to this with great anticipation, I present the official house renovation "Before and Afters". So here we go, presented in chronological order:

The Roof


Siding in the Front


Siding in the Back


Master Bathroom


Hall Bathroom


Master Bedroom


Bedroom #2


Bedroom #3


Kitchen
 


Family Room
 

Living Room


Landscaping

How did you celebrate October 31st?

Our family does not participate in traditional (spooky) celebrations of October 31st. We have chosen to attend carnival type activities, commonly called Fall Festivals, or Happy Harvest Time, or some other goofy name like that. Anyway, the kids have a blast and get candy by playing little carnival games and such. The past couple of years, we've been going to a local Baptist church for their community Fall Festival. We have a lot of fun, and gets tons of candy (which I pick through after the kids go to bed. Shhh! Don't tell them I said that.) There's usually no scary or inappropriate costumes.

The past two years, this church has brought in one of those blow-up arena things, called Jousting, or something like that. Two people battle it out with blow-up "sticks" in an air-cusioned arena. You have to stand on a pedestal, and whack each other, trying to knock the other person off their pedestal. I'll tell you one thing, the pedestal is not made for an over-weight grown man to stand on.

Here's a couple of videos of the kids battling it out. The first one is Claire vs. Mary, and the second one is Sean vs. Mary. Pay no attention to the over-zealous parents, prodding their kids to knock each others heads off.

Our house is finally on the market! Orlando, here we come!

(Well, we have to sell the house first, but here we come, none the less!)

After 9 months of beating our house into submission, and getting it into shape, we have finally listed it, and put it up for sale. Please pray with us for a quick sale.

Please take a look at it at our realtor’s website here, and you can also see a few more pictures on Realtor.com here.

Thank you to everyone who helped us in the renovations. We wouldn’t have been able to finish without you.

I will be posting some before and after pictures in the near future.

Ok, so 24 kids went to Wendy's and here's why...

A couple of weekends ago, we went to Orlando to meet up with some close friends of ours, the Grahams, and the Lapennas. We've known both the Grahams and Lapenns since our two oldest boys were very small. We were in the same church, went to the same small group, and hung out together as familes, as much as we could. Almost every Sunday, we went to Wendy's after church to eat lunch. It was a very small restaurant., but we fit just fine.

Over the years, all three families have grown, not in volume so much, but numerically. Well, maybe some of us have grown in volume (Richard you know who I'm talking about!) Today, I doubt all 3 familes would be able to fit in that small Wendy's on Colonial Drive in Orlando, so we found a new place to meet the other day. Same restaurant chain, different location. Here's the result:

Some statistics:
3 familes
24 children (Grahams-7; Hendersons-8; Lapennas-9)
9 boys
15 girls
Ages range from 19 to almost 2
All 3 familes have 3 boys each
All 3 familes have a boy as the youngest
2 familes have an "Andrew Scott"
That's 16 woman years of pregnancy
162,000 diaper changes (for a cost of $55,848.00)
Etc., etc., etc.

Back porch is usable now...

No longer a junk storage place. It's actually a porch, with a fan and everything! Details to follow.

Living room done!

Are we finished now? Lot's of little details to do around the whole house, but we're getting close! Details to follow.

Family room - habitable again!

The Family Room (back room) is done and was probably the easiest room. Details to follow.

Kitchen - check!

Only five weeks in the making. The kitchen is finally done! Woo hoo! We had fun removing and disposing of the old appliances, tearing out the old cabinets, busting up the old tile, replacing the drywall that was not suitable for staying, and having the wall paper removed. Then we had to put it all back together again. New drywall, texturing, new cabinets (which was way more fun than I thought it would be.) Then having the floor tiled, and then the counter tops installed. Next came the appliances. Now who would have thought the appliances would be the hardest part of the kitchen? Not me. Did you know that refridgerators bulge in the middle a little bit? The longer the time between when the fridge is made, and the time it's installed, the more meancing the bulge in the fridge's middle. This makes putting it in place a little hard when you only hae one half inch clearance between the width of the fridge on paper, and the width of the opening it goes into. The middle of the fridge is a whopping five-eighth's inch wider than the top and bottom of the fridge. Well, four nights of shoving and squeezing, and by golly it's in place. And you know what that means? The kitchen's officially open for business!

Painting the House

2 Saturdays ago, we had plans to paint the house, but Tropical Storm Barry had other plans. We whined and pouted, but we did desperately needed the rain. We've been in a drought for some time now. So, we resceduled to the next Saturday (June 9.) Several guys (and their kids) came over to help us. What a blessing that was to us. We were able to get 90% of it done in 1 day. Amazing. It would have taken us several weekends to do that on our own, or a couple $thousand$ to pay someone to do it. The weather has hot, but moisture free. Now all we have is touching up, and some higher elevation things to paint. And how I love to get on that 16 foot extension ladder at the very top. Oh boy. Fun fun.