Advent 2014

Happy New Church Year!!!  

Advent is here again, hooray!  Time to start over.  Time to prepare for Christ to come.  Time to be watchful and ready.  Such a great time of year - kinda like Lent, but a little less harsh.

If you are curious what we have done in the past, you can read all about our previous Advents here.

TRADITIONAL:  We are doing a lot of the same stuff as these past years, including: The Traditional Advent Wreath, The Story of Christmas Book (with an ornament and reading for each day in December),  and The Jesse Tree (a lot like the Story of Christmas book - ornaments for each day that have symbols from the Scripture stories they represent).  I'm short on time so I won't go into a lot of detail on things we have previously done.  We also have our outdoor Nativity scene up.  Unfortunately none of the characters (Mary, Jesus, and Joseph) work this year and I'm too lazy to check the bulbs and fuses, but I did put lights around them so you can see they are there.

NEW:  The one new item this year is a manger for baby Jesus.  We are going to soften the bed for baby Jesus (with cut up pieces of string) by our good deeds and sacrifices.  Then on Christmas we will put our "big" baby Jesus in his bed.  This is my first year for this because I just found a "big" baby Jesus and bed that I could afford this year.

The "manger" for Jesus is in the middle and I am going to keep the string in the blue bowel beside it, until we put it in piece by piece through our acts of charity and sacrifice.  On a side note, notice how sad my Advent wreath looks without candles :(  I did find ONE after this picture, so I guess that gives me exactly a week to get more!

PRAYER:  I'm thinking of possibly doing some Liturgy of the Hours with the older kids this year.  Night Prayer is nice and short, but kind of dark and dreary, so maybe we will try Morning Prayer or Daytime Prayer.

MUSIC:  Since my son Samuel has proven he REALLY likes singing and music can be quite holy I am also hoping to add more singing - at least a song or two (a "hymn" or two - not Old MacDonald or some such - hah) with the children each day of Advent.  Perhaps we can keep this up during the Christmas Season and on to Ordinary Time, and perhaps it can encourage me to get better at playing the piano!!  (Ok, let's not get crazy - hopeful, but not crazy :)

GIFT:  I was also going to wrap up 25 books and have the kids unwrap one for each day in December, but it is the night before December 1st and I have to wrap the books so. . . I'm guessing this probably won't happen this year.  But maybe next year.  (Note: Supposedly you are supposed to give your kids 25 NEW books for this, but I figure have a TON of books we have barely read - and some really good ones, too! - so why not just wrap up the ones we have?  I imagine it would be almost as special as the kids really care more about me reading them the story, I am sure, than the actual book itself being new or old.)

CRAFT:  We also have some crafts I picked up from Oriental Trading that I was thinking of giving a try.  Nothing too spectacular, just a sticker nativity and an Advent candle craft.  I know, why waste the money on something I could probably do better from scratch?  Well, I will tell you why - because this way I might ACTUALLY DO THEM!!  I often shy from crafts because of all the prep work involved.  The prep work is done for me and the crafts were CHEAP.  Plus since they come by the dozen we can do them this year and next!!

So, there ya have it.  Sorry I cannot take time to be more exciting about all this.  Well, let me rephrase that.  I AM EXCITED about ADVENT!!  But I am once again up against the wire (as Advent is HERE!!) and I'm exhausted from being sick for a long while and then just finishing up Thanksgiving celebrations today.  So I do not have a lot of time to put lots of fun links and pictures into this post.  But something is better than nothing.  So here is something.