Playing and Resting

Our Christmas was relatively quiet and simple. Since we stayed at home here in Ohio, my parents travelled up from Georgia to celebrate with us, which is always nice. We attended our church's candlelight Christmas Eve service and returned home to enjoy our traditional "Low-Country Boil" and "Happy Birthday Jesus" Cake. The next day was spent amid three excited children playing with their gifts and taking joy in giving the grown-ups their gifts as well.

Over the weekend the girls and I took some sort of chest cold that throws us into fits of coughing, especially at night. I am praying for quick recovery, as I had several projects around the house I had planned on completing before beginning school again next week.

Meanwhile, we're enjoying just being lazy together here at home. Today as I rested on the couch the girls made delectable play-dough icecream treats for me with one of the gifts they received, and Superman stays busy working on the new Star Wars Lego set that Santa brought.

We're also celebrating (very lightly) the Twelve Days of Christmas, ending on January 6th, which was the way they did things in Medieval Times (our current unit study). More about that in another post.

Oh, and I'm reading this...



Havah is the poignant and vivid account of the first four chapters of Genesis as told through the voice of Eve. I've had a hard time putting it down.

I hope that you and your family are enjoying your Christmas break together!

Blessings,

Merry Christmas!

Praying that you all have a blessed Christmas with your family and friends,
as we celebrate the birth of Jesus our Savior.

Blessings

Making Merry With Mickey

We just returned from a wonderful week at the "happiest place on earth" - Disney World!

We were there Monday through Friday and hit three parks - Magic Kingdom (of course), Epcot, and Disney Hollywood Studios. Everything was all decorated for Christmas and just beautiful. One thing I like about Disney is that they play sacred Christmas carols along with other Christmas music over their sound system, and they don't mind putting up a manger scene or two!

We had so much fun, made some great memories, and took tons of photos - none of which I can upload right now, but I'll try later.

In the meantime, we're doing laundry, cleaning house, and getting ready for my parents to come tomorrow for Christmas - yay! We've got a couple of things planned for this week, but I'm really hoping we can settle in for some simple Christmas storytimes and do some fun baking in the kitchen together.

Praying that this blessed season is full of meaning for you this year.

Simple Christmas

This Christmas finds us practicing for the church Christmas program and getting ready to go out of town for a few days before the holiday. So...we're keeping things simple around here this year. We're enjoying our regular traditions...

-Trimming the tree - Kurt always sets up a musical train underneath, which the kids love!

-Nighttime drives to see Christmas lights. There's nothing sweeter than those shouts of glee from the backseat, as they point out all of the different decorations to Kurt and me.

-Playing with our child-friendly nativity - we have a plastic one and a wooden one, and both get much handling. :)

-Reading lots of wonderful Christmas stories together, including a sweet little advent calendar book that tells a little bit of the Christmas story each day.

-On Christmas Eve we'll bake a Happy Birthday Jesus Cake to be eaten the next day, attend our church's Christmas Eve candlelight service, and return home to do a little Nativity play for Daddy, Grandma, and Granddaddy - complete with bedsheet costumes, stuffed animal props, dialogue, and music - very fun!

Some new things we've done/will do this year...

-One day I got out the tempera paints, some butcher paper, and some stamped paint rollers and let the kids make homemade Christmas paper. It was really quite easy, and believe it or not, minimal mess and cleanup. The kids really enjoyed it, and especially liked the fact that their creations were going to be used to wrap gifts.

-Since we are studying Medieval Times we will be attempting a gingerbread castle after we return home from our trip - feel free to wish me luck with that!

I also wanted to share our units and activities from Christmases past. These links will take you to some of our favorite traditions such as Christmas books, ornaments to make, a recipe or two, and pictures of the annual Christmas play we do at home for Grandma and Granddaddy on Christmas Eve.

Around the Manger Unit

Christmas Symbols Unit

Other Christmas Posts

Hope you're enjoying the making of some special memories with your children this Christmas season!

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Blessings,