Christmas Activities

This year I must say I feel I did do better preparing for the holidays. With the exception of a forgotten Gingerbread House to make and no sugar cookies to decorate yet, overall, I have done pretty good.

We have had a light week in school....just keeping up with Math, Grammar and Phonics and our regular daily activities such as piano practice. We have been "studying" Christmas with activities such as memorizing and studying a few Christmas carols. For some reason, my boys do not like to sing out loud, so I am working on that. We learn a song together, then I am encouraging them to sing it which is going surprisingly well, we talk about what it means, and then they write it out from memory.

We also have been reading Bartholomew's Passage which is a daily advent reading, I highly recommend. There is 3 books in the series and last year we read through Jotham's Journey. They are stories written with a part to read each day and a lesson to take from that days reading. Almost every day is a "cliffhanger" so we can't wait to get to it the next day! I have one left to get for next year!

Christmas cards are out, packages are sent, only one left to wrap! How do you hide a guitar? I had to pull off an amazing feat to hide bow and arrows already...

We had a great time decorating the tree! I got the boys their special ornaments at a craft fair this year and they really liked them! Connor actually told me that he could give up all the presents, but it just didn't feel like Christmas without a tree. Think I should test that next year?

He got an Oregon Duck ornament which goes quite nicely with his new jammies, don't you think?
We had to remember the year of the bunny....so there you have it!

Here is Connor with his "football" section. The tree rotates around slowly and they love watching their ornaments come around to see!

And of course....Bean with the flock he adds to the tree!Here is the completed job and we threw in the big dog for the shot who really doesn't care about Christmas but will love the bag of beggin strips the boys picked out for him!

By far, my favorite Christmas decoration is this Angel as part of the Jim Shore collection. I think she is SO beautiful and I love the nativity carved into her skirt!

I had a baking party with some moms from FIGS, saw A Christmas Carol play at my neighbors church and had a Happy Birthday Jesus party with my homeschool group! Tonight is my husband's company Christmas party. Then I need to find time to make some of those sugar cookies with the boys!