happy advent time

our first advent was a beautiful time of warmth, togetherness, and anticipation. we made a jesse tree out of trader joe's paper bags to put onto the wall in the kitchen. we read the scriptures from isaiah and 1st samuel and sang christmas songs. then i had a special treat up my sleeve, an advent package from auntie martina in germany! she is so thoughtful, the girls were ecstatic, of course! she sent beautiful german woodcut ornaments and chocolate and tea and coloring books and cookies and then some! what a beautiful auntie i have. so amazing. i long for her to know the higher Love that drives the true excitement into this season! my girls (esp. sparrow) are so excited about Jesus; her idea was to make a manger and put "all our beautiful things" in front of it as an offering to baby Jesus. i even made a manger that sunday morning out of cardboard, but alas! it buckled quite quickly with golden  trying to put her dolly into it! perhaps we can reinforce and salvage it... we skipped second advent because we were out, but did third advent today and the girls made apple symbols for the jesse tree. golden's apple is sooo adorable! both apples are. i like these little crafts because i can make up anything simple and the girls are pleased to do it and pleased to tape their creations onto our 2-D tree. (though i do have my reservations about doing these "directed" crafts with golden, i think that kind of thing is mostly detrimental for a young artist's development. praying the good will outweigh that, though.)  the jesse tree is such a wonderful way to keep the focus on the story of Christ, and to teach Christ's centrality to the family from a young age. it takes you through the old testament with creation, the fall, the story of the covenant, israel, and all the key people leading up to Jesus.

lighting the candle

peeking princess with the fall crown

favorite curtain game

package from auntie martina

the jesse tree

golden calls this "apple and a raindrop." so there she is still being creative after i gave her a guided "apple and leaf" craft to do!