Advent Happenings

Over the last few years I have read lots and lots about Advent and its traditions but have been intimidated to jump in.

Well, here we go.

We celebrated the first Sunday of Advent today. This is the first year we are being intentional about where our focus is this season. We have always tried to focus on Christ and not the commercial parts of this holiday, but this year we decided to intentionally talk about it every day.

We decided to make a Jesse Tree. I sent the boys to get us a "branch" .... I said a BRANCH .... I got this:

Yeah .... boys will be boys. =)

After some trimming I think we ended up with a nice tree that will sit in our kitchen window seat.

We got this book to help guide us.

Here are the kids diligently making our ornaments for each day's reading:

Here is our ornament for our Day One reading:

And here is Bubby placing it on our Jesse Tree:

We also made an Advent Wreath which I am super excited about. What a wonderful and simple way to focus on the Reason for this season.

The Husband made us a lovely dinner and we read our first Advent reading and lit our first candle. We decided to go with this book to guide our daily readings for the Advent season. We will read from it and the Jesse Tree book each day. The readings today were such a blessing. I can't wait to read them all!

We decided there was no better time to start our other decorations so The Husband drug out the tree. We used to always go cut down a real tree until we realized that it was no coincidence that Bubby was always sick at Christmas time. He was even hospitalized for his first birthday AND Christmas. Ugh. Anyway, turns out part of his problem was that he was allergic to the tree. Boo.

Here are Daddy and Fancy working away on the tree:

 

And Bubby working on the lights:

And me and Pedro supervising ..... well, we got tired:

And yes, for the "keeping it real portion" of this post, that is me laying with Pedro on the living room floor in my jammies. I never even got out of them today. That is the result of working the last five nights in a row. Painful. I was excited to get Advent rolling today but tuckered out during the decorating. I will have to go to bed soon so we can have a productive day around here tomorrow.

I hope you are all having fun getting ready for Christmas!

A Brief Update

Wow ... it's been awhile!

Things have been busy but good around here. Life just keeps moving .... and so fast!

Fancy just finished up her Volleyball season last night with a great win. She had a fun time on a team with a bunch of sweet girls. She can't wait until the new season starts up in the Spring.

My little "Lady Longhorn" (my scanner does not give the best of color)

Bubby is just starting his Basketball season with his team, "The Sharks". He is super excited for the games to get going in December. Pictures coming soon!

School is wrapping up nicely over here as we head into our LONG winter break. This worked so well for us last year we are doing it again. I am ready for some relaxation and some planning for spring. We will tie up a few loose ends over the next day or so and then be DONE until January. Ah ... the freedom.

Ok, now for a few funnies regarding Bubby: This first one isn't as funny as it is sweet.

He decided last night he wanted to prepare dessert for the family. He made us all a serving of Chocolate Pudding with Whipped Cream and Sprinkles. He even HAD to put it in the "fancy glasses". He worked QUITE hard on his masterpieces. It was YUMMY!

Thanks Bubby!

 

And now for the funny: I came across one of his "inventions" today. He is CONSTANTLY inventing, building, and/or creating something. It was a wooden dowel he found in the garage that he had attached some pencil leads to with tape. He was wanting to see how it would write. I didn't get a picture of it at that point but told him he could try it and then needed to take it apart because it was dangerous to carry something around with so many sharp points on the end.

Ok ... so I said it ... did you see the word? DANGEROUS. Yeah ... that was a mistake.

Clearly this gave him another idea altogether. He disappeared for a bit (I was thinking he had gone to disassemble his creation ... HAH ... silly me) but I found out that was not the case. He came to me a bit later with this:

Uh, yeah. He thought DANGEROUS sounded pretty good I guess. He told me with this "Ninja Stick" he could fight off any "Bad Guys" that tried to get into our house.

Incase the pic isn't super clear, that is a 3 foot dowel with pencil leads and push pins taped to it so all you breaker inners out there BEWARE!

Have a GREAT Thanksgiving!

Science Fun

Bubby is learning about the moon.

Today he did a "spearmint" aka experiment to help him understand that although the moon seems to give off light, it actually does not. It is just a reflection of the sunlight.

He used a flashlight (sun) and a CD (moon) to reflect light onto the ceiling.

 

The plan was for this to take approximately 5 minutes. It took us a good 20 because he was having so much fun watching that reflection dance all over the ceiling. Midway through I gave up and got a load of dishes done while I waited.

Multi-tasking .... it's the greatest!

A Halloween Pic

Batman and The Purple Punk

(Yes, she made it up .... we discovered you have to be creative at her age ... the costumes they sell for this age group are ... um .... not okay!)

I didn't crop Pedro out because I thought it was so funny how he was looking at them as if they had lost their minds!

The "Boy Room"

So, we moved. And a big dilemma in the move was finding a place to house the "boy stuff". Drums, guitars, amp, stereo, weight bench (can you sense the testosterone here people?).

Anyway, we found a great house with a PERFECT room for school. Well, it was also the only option for the boys' stuff so they won. I still have a pretty great school room.

Without further ado, I present "THE BOY ROOM".

 

Okay, so you see those broken drumheads on the wall? And the busted up sticks in the container on the speaker? (You may have to click on them to enlarge to get a good look.) These are all products of Bubby's rock sessions and he is QUITE proud of them. So proud that we just HAVE to keep them and DISPLAY them. Good thing for him that he is so stinkin' cute because I am not a fan of displaying them.

He decided to name that wall one morning (while I was clearly not paying enough attention) ... here is what happened (the sunlight wasn't cooperating much):

"WALL OF DAMAGE"

I love that kid!