It is exciting to relive
all that we have done over the last few months.
But I am seriously tired of talking about it.
I am ready to talk about more recent things!
Then why don't you?
You ask?
Well,
this has really turned into more of a
scrapbook/family yearbook
of sorts
than anything else.
One of these days I am going to figure out how to print
this think in a book format
and I hope to have it
for years to come as to what we did
and what we were up to...
So...
bare with me
and let's continue our journey,
back in 2013.
(hopefully we will make it into 2014 before the
end of April!!)
This past Advent season,
I wanted to make sure my kids
understood what we were celebrating.
I tell my guys every year that it is
Jesus' birthday is the reason for the celebration.
We give/get presents just like we do on
OUR birthdays.
This is our way of showing love for each other.
So where does the jolly red guy come into play?
We still believe in Santa.
But I do my best to make sure he
takes at back seat to the whole reason
we have the day to celebrate anyway!
I found a very neat program that
a wonderfully talented lady put together called
It is really similar to the premise of an
Advent Calendar.
You read a couple of verses a day,
then discuss what they are about,
then do a craft that represents
what you have read.
A SIMPLE craft!
With mostly household items.
No need in having to hit the craft store,
every day,
for odd things.
If you have kids
and are at home with them,
you will have MOST of the materials
required for these crafts.
If not,
IMPROVISE!!!
(we did!!)
My guys really looked forward to this every day.
I had a hard time sitting them down
and doing it every day
(my fault not theirs).
We actually took the entire month of
December off from school because I had
SO.MUCH.TO.DO!
So sitting everyone down for an organized
craft activity...
didn't always happen.
I am EXTREMELY thankful
that my older 2 are old enough to
do a lot of things on their own
and
could even help me with the littles.
It wasn't 4 on 1
for everything.
that have been cut into the shape of a crown.
during the day.
We got dad involved a few times after dinner.
The two older boys
spent every waking moment with
santa hats on last year,
so the hubs bought these beauties for them this year.
Not mama's favorite.
Rico is showing off his angel representing Gabriel.
Then my guys got to use water colors,
which we don't do enough of!
In order to make Elizabeth and Mary.
(yep, totally laundry day too)
Here they are decorating CDs.
Huh?
Yep!
They suggested using old CDs,
I didn't have any old ones
I wanted to get rid of.
So we used one of the MANY
new unused ones we have literally moved
all over the place for the past 10+ years.
The CDs were to represent
Mary's Song.
These were Mary.
I did have to buy the wooden clothes pins
and the felt.
But totally could have used construction paper
for the clothes
and the people!
As far as displaying these
Truth in the Tinsel
ornaments...
that was the hard part!!!
There are many ways to display them!
MANY!!!
But with us having 4 of each
and my desire to keep them in order,
to help my younger guys "tell the story".
I wanted something other than randomly on a tree.
I looked,
hunted,
searched,
envisioned...
and finally came up with an idea to hang them
either from garland,
or like garland,
in somewhat of an advent calendar style.
We have a huge bay window in our kitchen
and I wanted to display them there.
So we did!
I was honestly not wanting to put the money into
4 strands of garland.
So for this year,
I just strung 4 strands of yarn from one side of the window
frame to the other.
Then each child got their own strand of yarn
to hang their ornaments from.
While I liked this idea a LOT,
next year I would like to use garland
just to give it a more "finished" and sophisticated look.
I realized that this was the ONLY picture I had of the display!
You will just have to look past the heads
and concentrate on the stuff hanging in the window.
Sorry.
Big fail on the picture taking for illustration purposes here.
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