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Christmas Eve 2011

Almost done with the December 2011 posts 🙂

We spent Christmas Eve day in a relaxed way. I had a couple odds and ends to pick up and in the early evening we went to church for the Christmas Eve service. We came home and Amelie helped me bake the cookies from an earlier post. We had arranged for my mom and sister Michelle to Skype with us while my mom read the Polar Express and Michelle did sound effects. It was just as much fun as last year because they get so into the story telling.  Then we let the girls open 1 present after dinner. The girls had plenty of time to play before we sent them off to bed.

Christmas Eve 2011
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Christmas Eve 2011

Christmas Eve 2011

Then we put the finishing touches on everything and went to sleep ourselves.

Christmas Eve 2011

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Advent 2011 – Truth in Tinsel

Through my various online homeschool buddies I heard about an ebook that came out called “Truth in Tinsel“. It’s a wonderful daily advent devotion for little kids that isn’t as over their head as some of the Jesse Tree books. You do a daily reading from the Bible with the children and a simple craft that goes along with it. Then there is a discussion section at the end. Nadia and I had some great conversations during this and she had some really sweet responses to the readings and questions that followed. Each craft is a small ornament to tell the story of advent – I bought little trees on clearance in January for when the girls do this together in 2012.

Advent 2011
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Advent 2011

Advent 2011Advent 2011

Nadia working on the scented dough to represent the frankincense and myrrh.

Advent 2011

Here are our crafts (we missed the crafts on some days -but still did the readings with all our other activity in December, but we almost completed the full 24):

Advent 2011

Light, Kingdom, Zechariah

Advent 2011

Gabriel, Mary, Mary and Elizabeth with pregnant bellies

Advent 2011

Song, Sun, Joseph, Joseph’s pillow (for his dream)

Advent 2011

Bethlehem, Stable, Clothes, Sheep

Advent 2011

Shepards, Temple, Star

Advent 2011

Wise Men, Gifts

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Thankful Thursday

kholer_highline

  • For having 1st world problems. (What is that?)
  • For things like our house flooding. When we had insurance and a place to stay while it was being fixed. And guess what? Through it all we had a HOUSE – with a yard and a garage with 2 working cars in it.
  • For when the washer breaks. Sure it has to be fixed, but what must a washer seem like to someone in a 3rd world country? A magic box connected to your wall that fills with CLEAN water to wash your dirty clothes. You just dump in some soap that you can find at any store within 100 miles. Then you move it to another magic box that drys them for you so they can come out fresh and clean. So I am grateful that we have the money to fix our magic box when it breaks.
  • on that note, For CLEAN water that pumps into my house without me giving it a 2nd thought. Our American toilet water is cleaner than what the bulk of the world walks miles everyday to collect.
  • For when our A/C motor went out in the middle of the summer and we all spent a really hot night waiting for the repair man to come in the morning. Another magic item that we take for granted that keeps us comfortable day and night no matter what the weather. Once again grateful for the money we had to fix it.
  • For having 3 toilets to clean.  How blessed are we to not ever have to think about where we go to the bathroom or what to do with it when we are done.

I could go on and on, but instead I ask you to post some of your 1st world problems you are thankful for today.