Preparing for Christmas

For the Family -  A few pics of our preparing for the Season.

As we prepare for the season - all the decorating, gift making, and dinner scheduling - The Lord keeps impressing on me that these years are short with my boys. 

The verse that comes to mind is;

 Ephesians 5:31 "For this reason (being members of the Church Body) a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."

In sharing this with my husband we decided to really protect our holiday time (all holidays) with our children and establish some of our own traditions. - Because one day our boys will grow up and marry and they will leave us and cleave to their own wives.  - We (Caleb and I) would want this for them, and would want them to establish their own family traditions - even if it is hard or did not involve us to the degree we would like. But choose to except and be grateful for what they did share, and be respectful of their own tradition making. When you think about it - How fun it would be to see them build their own family's - I think it should be a joyful experience not a hardship. 

(May the Lord remind me when it comes - not tooo soon!)

At first Jumping Bean was disappointed with the fake tree - He thought we were going to out and cut one down. - But as they got going - he became more and more excited. 

The boys decorating the tree. - They sure had fun! - The only pic I got that was not blurry from all the moving around.

Our tree - I thought it was great 

- we used a paper cut out in the window of our apartment last year to save space, and it was great for little hands. 

I used the display boxes for the Nativity set - out of the kids reach

Gave the kids a place to put their Nativity Set - they can play with it any time they would like.

On the blog 2 Teaching Mommies  they wrote up a review of Truth in the Tinsel

I thought it was a great idea - too much for us to make an ornament each day! - But I just loved the idea of reading part of the Christmas story ever day! - This advent calendar starts with prophecy of the Christ all the way to the Cross - giving the whole picture of scripture. 

So far the boys are really enjoying this - we gather on the couch every morning before we start our day - they each grab their own Bibles as I read the verses for the day and talk about the clue. 

Weather or not we make ornaments next year I would surely do this again!

It gives purpose to counting down the days.