Merry Christmas!

Happy birthday to Jesus and merry Christmas from our family!

Advent - Day 28

Today advent comes to a close...tomorrow is CHRISTMAS!!  The boys are so exciting.  Our home is buzzing.  And I'm feeling a slight bit sad that it's coming to an end.  I just love the entire Christmas season. I love, love, love it!!

Our advent activity today is as old as I am.  I can't remember not doing this growing up, as a single adult, as a married adult and now as a mom.  We will go to church, out to dinner, and then off to look at Christmas lights.  As the evening ends, we will come home to prepare for Santa's arrival -- leaving out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.  We will leave notes for Santa and go to bed with much anticipation.  A great anticipation...similar to what I felt the night of June 22, 2005, and February 24, 2008, which were the nights I went to sleep knowing I would have a baby the next day.  I think of the anticipation Mary felt on that night when she was about to deliver the Saviour.  Oh, just to pause on this busy and exciting day and think about the whole picture of what Christmas did for me.  What Christmas did for you.  What Christmas has done for the world.  Because of His coming, we are free.

May you and your family have a wonderful, wonderful Christmas!  Blessings to you!

Advent - Day 27

Today for our advent activity we talked about traveling by car v. traveling by donkey.  What was it like?  How would you like to go to school on a donkey?  How did Mary feel pregnant on a donkey?

We are getting very excited about Christmas around here!  Our elf had a snowball fight with Buzz Lightyear last night.  What a fun thing to wake up to this morning!

Advent - Day 26

Tonight our church did a Christmas Eve (eve, eve) service.  This was our advent activity.  The service was followed with a birthday cake for Jesus, bouncey houses, and a hayride.  It was a lot of fun!  I don't have any photos since I'm not an advocate of taking pictures in church (LOL!).  It never occurred to me to pack my camera!

Advent - Day 25

Today we did a tradition that my brother, David, & I did as kids -- decorated Christmas cookies.  My mom likes to host this "event".  So we all went over and decorated cookies at my parents' house.

Advent - Day 24

Psalm 139:13-14 - For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  

We are special for lots of reasons, but the main reason is because God made us.  Our handprint is one of the special things about us.  Today we made our handprint out of a handprint kit.  This way we can remember the size of Brewer's hand at age 6 and Maddox's hand at age 3.

Now they have to dry overnight and then I can add the boys' names and make them into ornaments.

Advent - Day 23

As Brewer says to me sometimes, "They can't all be gems."  Well, this advent activity certainly didn't turn out to be a gem.  Our activity today was to make baby Jesus out of Wikki Sticks.  The idea came from an article in Family Fun.  They made baby Jesus out of yarn.  I thought we could modify it and make him out of Wikkis.  Um...not so much.

Thanks for sharing in our laugh tonight!

The middle photo is the yarn idea from Family Fun.
The left photo is Maddox's baby Jesus.  Yes, he decided Jesus should be wrapped in a hot pink blanket,
The right photo is Brewer's alien, oops, baby Jesus.