On Monday, Sean and I left the house early for a full day of testing at the doctor's office. The other children were asked to start our Christmas baking by making cookies. They made a new recipe...Chocolate Crinkles...we look forward to enjoying these during the Christmas season. We also started a batch of Anise Cookies but the process is a multiple day event so we did not complete these until the end of the week.
We did not have a lot of time for our Advent Adventures that day...we discussed the importance of the symbol of light during the Christmas season. This theme will come up again at the end of the week (and of course on Christmas day!). Our family saves the lighting of our tree for Christmas Eve after we return from Mass.
The Advent Angel was found throughout the week, and we discussed the importance of Joseph in the Christmas story. This theme would continue for the next two days as well as we learned about his obedience, righteousness, and dedication. We should also seek these virtues in our lives and Joseph makes a good role model. Tuesday our morning was spent celebrating St. Nicholas with an event I organized with our local home school group. We went to a nursing home to carol for the residents. We also served cookies and wassail, gave out Christmas cards and read different Christmas books. This was so much fun and the activities director was enthusiastic about our visit. By the time we left we were talking about planning our next visit. I hope we can go there more often in the new year.
Wednesday was filled with our routine visit to the library. We always enjoy this visit with our friendly librarian. We then joined some friends at the local park near our home. We had just completed our Joseph study. The suggestion for an obstacle course to reenact the story sounded like a great idea fora larger group. Thankfully this work out with a impromptu set up with five stations around the playground. Here are the events we highlighted:
- Betrothal to Mary-show love by hugging your mom!
- Dream from the Angel-lay on the rocker bench and count to ten
- Journey to Bethlehem-weave through the swings and pay tax by slapping your hand on picnic table
- Rock the Baby Jesus-rock the bouncy ride
- Dream to Escape Herod-lay on the baby gym and run to the fallen log
The children loved the relay so much that they raced through it twice! It was also nice to see the older ones helping the younger ones!
Another round at the doctor's office kept us buy on Thursday along with a little bit more drama then I care to share with the world. Oy!
Then today we celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I am sure there were celebrations with traditional dances and performances somewhere in San Antonio. We will need to be more vigilant about finding these events for next year. We stayed home and listened to the story from one of our favorites...Glory Stories.
We also added to our nativity scene and Jesse Tree throughout the week. We need to bake more and prepare for a special visitor. We have a special trio arriving next week. I also just invited my mom and brother to our house for next week. I think our house is in need of a deeper cleaning for many reasons!
A full week and in spite of the outside events I think we were able to keep our Advent focus.
No comments:
Post a Comment