Start the Holidays!

On Saturday we went to our first event of the Holiday season. Bye bye Thanksgiving, hello Christmas Advent. We are trying this year to celebrate more along the lines of the Catholic church. So we are trying to emphasize Advent right now and Christmas starting with Christmas Eve until Epiphany. These little ones won't be going to Catholic schools like our older kids did, but we still want them to experience the liturgical year. So...we will do it at home. And I do like a little change now and then.

Here's what we are doing to celebrate Advent:

We have an Advent wreath that we light every night at dinner.

We did not put Baby Jesus or the Three Wise Men in our manger scene this year. Yet. Baby Jesus will go in Christmas Eve and the Three Wise Men will not be put out until Epiphany. Concrete things for little concrete minds.

We are using our Advent storybook and calendar that we used last year. They LOVE it.

So our first Advent event was helping to decorate the farmhouse at Littleton Historical Museum. We love this place and go several times a year. Yes, it's free. You know me too well. This time Daddy got to go too, and eat warm gingerbread cookies with his little girls. If there is one thing I don't like at all, it's gingerbread cookies.

Mia got to put a candle on the Christmas tree. We tried to explain electricity to her but we just got some pretty blank stares.

The girls then got to make a decoration.

Anna lost interest in making the decoration, but she sure wanted her picture taken with it!

Since we have never gone to the museum on a weekend before, we've never seen the blacksmith shop "in operation". We missed the demonstration, but Mia asked the smith a few questions (real ones) about horseshoes.

The best part of the morning: playing on the stump...

...pretending to be statues.

Happy Advent!