26 days of family fun ...

I hope you had a chance to look at the Advent Conspiracy video, I linked in my last posting. I love the phrase it gives of giving less presents and more presence this Christmas. So often I think over the past week and I can't find much time when I really gave my girls my undivided presence. That is definitely one of my big goals for this Christmas season.
My friend Katie and her husband Andrew have a great Advent tradition with their two kids. Each day when the kids open their advent calendar door of the day, they don't find candy as most kids do, they find a family activity or adventure. Some of them are simple, some of them are bigger weekend adventures that Katie and Andrew have planned out. I think this is such a great way to make sure you connect with your kids every single day of the Christmas season.
I asked Katie to share some of the surprises her kids will be opening this year.

• making a fire in the fireplace
• Going sledding
• Having hot cocoa after dinner
• Taking a drive to see the neighborhood Christmas lights
• making Christmas cookies together
• watching a family Christmas movie

I loved her suggestions. At first I thought, "how can I come up with 26 things?" But after I heard Katie's ideas, and then looked at our calendar and saw special things we are doing such as going to the Parade of Lights, our church's choir concerts, and friends' Christmas parties, I saw that it would be pretty easy to fill in the rest.

Do you have special things, big and small, that you do with your kids each December? I still need to fill in a few days and would love to hear what your family does this time of year.

Advent Conspiracy

This Sunday is the first day of Advent. Advent is the four week period in the church calendar leading up to Christmas. Although many protestant churches do not recognise the season of Advent, I think it is a wonderful thing for all Christians. Advent means "coming" and it is about preparing our hearts for the coming of Christ. I love having a time set apart in the calendar that we can take to prepare ourselves for Christmas. Over the next five days I am going to share some ideas of things to do to make your family's Advent meaningful.

First of all, check out this amazing video from Advent Conspiracy. I think I have watched it 50 times in the last month and it has completely changed how I want our family to celebrate Christmas this year! I hope it inspires you as well!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVqqj1v-ZBU

Thanksgiving Eve projects

Every year on Thanksgiving eve the girls and I make Indian headdresses and hand print turkeys. While being fun crafts, they also create a small record of how the girls have grown that year. The girls love to try on last year's headdresses and see how much bigger their turkey is this year. We use the turkeys to decorate the kitchen and the girls and I wear (yes Pete thinks i am weird) our headdresses while we watch the parade. Pj's, hot chocolate, a construction paper headdress and the Macy's day parade, to me that is Thanksgiving morning!

As I take time thinking about the many things I am thankful for this year. You come to mind. I am so grateful that when I send out this blog, you read it! Thank you for your encouragement, comments, ideas and support. I have loved making new bloggy friends and connecting with old friends around the world through this blog. You are all a great blessing to me.

3 ways to inspire gratitude this Thanksgiving …

I bet some of you who read my last few posts regarding Christmas prep thought that I must be skipping right over Thanksgiving this year. Never fear, I am not! I love Thanksgiving. I love that our country was the first country to set aside a day just to give thanks. I love that Thanksgiving comes right before the rush of Christmas. It is the perfect time to count our many, many blessings before we start into the commercial Christmas season of "I want, I want, I want."

Each year, I make a point to have some sort of activity with the girls to talk about what we are Thankful for. That activity creates something visual that I leave up into after Thanksgiving. I often try to incorporate whatever we have created into our Thanksgiving dinner decorations. Here are three of my favorites. I hope they bless your family this Thanksgiving.

The Thanksgiving Tree: Take a tree limb and put it in a decorative pot. Support the limb with floral foam or rocks. Cut out paper leaves and string each leaf onto a ribbon or raffia bow. Set aside some time as a family to talk about the importance of Thanksgiving and of having a spirit of gratitude. Write down what each family is grateful for on the leaves. Hang the leaves on the tree. I like to leave some leaves blank so that guests will be able to write on them on Thanksgiving day. During dinner, take all the leaves off and read them out loud. ( I will post a picture of our later this week – it is so pretty!)

I'm Grateful You're Here Mats: Make a paper placemat for each person who will be part of your Thanksgiving dinner. Have your kids prominently write the person's name on the placemat, decorate the mat with drawings, stickers and pictures of that person. List things that you are grateful for in that person. For example: Grandma, thank you for taking me to the library each week. Take the finished placemats to an office supply store or Kinkos to have them laminated. They may not be the fanciest placemats you could use on Thanksgiving but they are surely the most meaningful!

Grateful Turkeys: These little turkeys remind me of elementary school. I use to love making them every year. Make a turkey using a pinecone for the body and construction paper cut out for the head, weird red neck thing (I am sure it has a name) and the feathers. Before your children put in the feathers, have them write something on each one that they are thankful for. You can also do this for your family members, similar to the placemats, and have each person's turkey sitting on their plate when they arrive on Thanksgiving.

I hope your family enjoys these ideas. I would love to hear about projects your family does in preparation of Thanksgiving.

 

Planning for a point this year ...

A few years ago, I found myself Christmas shopping, wrapping presents and sending out Christmas cards right up until Christmas Eve. Then of course there was the cooking. We had stayed home that year and I was hosting Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas brunch. So even on Christmas Eve, I was up cleaning dishes and getting brunch prepped. Oh by the way, I had a 6 week old – so you're getting the picture here, right? Fa la la la la – t'was not the season to be jolly. In my busyness the one guest who had not been invited to our celebration was Christ. There was no room in my inn that year for Him, frankly I was just trying to stay on my feet and survive. When the gifts had been opened, the dishes cleaned up and the tree thrown out, I was left feeling empty and wondering what exactly was the point of all that craziness!

I vowed that that would be the last Christmas season spent on the work. I know Christmas cards have to be sent. My kids do have some gift expectations and I love to see decorations put up. But I had to take a serious look at what really needed to get done and what I could let go of. The first thing to go was the piles of gifts. Did you know the average American family spends $800 on Christmas every year? That's nuts. Over the last couple of years, Pete and I have significantly cut back on our giving. The girls each get three gifts from us. We agreed with cousins, aunts and uncles that non of us needed anything, so instead we give a charitable donations instead. We have cut our gift list back by about 75%, it has made a huge difference in the time we spend shopping, wrapping and waiting in line at the post office.

With our shopping cut back, the second, and maybe larger, change I made, was my planning. I realized that you can't have a Christ-filled Christmas if you don't do a lot of preplanning. That planning can't start in December; it has to start in November. Last year I started setting a deadline of when the work of Christmas will be done. Last year it was the 12^tt of December, I think I actually finished by the 14^th. This year my goal is December 1^st. By then the shopping, wrapping, and Christmas cards will be done. So then what happens you ask? Well, then we actually celebrate Christmas. Novel idea huh? Our family will go ice skating, see concerts and do advent devotions. With work not crowding our December, there will be room for Christ to be invited in to our home, our hearts and our celebration this Christmas, so come January we won't be asking, what was the point of it all!

And where would those political posts be?

A few months ago I posted that I was planning on blogging about politics during the presidential race. I know you all held your breathe and were greatly disappointed. Some of you have e-mailed to ask where all the political posts were, so I thought I owed you all an explanation. As I wrote in my post a few months ago, I am very passionate about politics. I love to discuss candidates, parties and platforms. I love that we live in a country where we have that freedom. It is an amazing gift. So I was getting right into my fired up political mind set – Obama sign in the front yard, and a pin on my purse – when I sat down in church and heard a sermon from our pastor about politics and faith. It was not one of those "go vote this way" sermons, it was essentially about keeping our eyes on Christ this election season. One thing he said really pulled at my heart. He asked, Who do people know you to be? Basically, what is the label you wear? Democrat? Republican? Doctor? Mother? Activist? Independent? Farmer? Teacher? I don't know about you, but don't want any of those labels to be who I am known as. I don't want to be known as Wendy the Democrat. Sure, I'm a democrat, but that's not who I am.

Daughter of the King
Servant of Christ
Follower of Jesus Christ
Christian

Those would be the labels that matter to me. So when I thought of writing about my political views and sending one more piece of ideology into your inbox this Fall, I just couldn't do it. We all heard enough pundits, didn't we? We all received enough flyers, postcards, spam and robocalls without me adding to your daily deluge. I don't honestly believe that writing about politics would have swayed anyone's vote, but what it could have done was take my eyes off what I set out to do in this blog. It would have turned my blog into a space of division and controversy amongst sister of Christ, instead of being a place where you can sit down with a cup of coffee and be (hopefully) encouraged in life. It would have been just another political e-mail that annoyed 50% of its readers.

Now we have all cast our votes, and the nation has made its representative selections, our challenges continue much the same. As parents the work continues whether it be keeping peace between offspring or guiding our children toward a living faith. As women, we continue to find that elusive state of balance (sorry to leave my approximately 5 male readers out). As Christians we continue to serve and worship our amazing God more fully. I hope that by making the choice not to blog about politics we can move on together as a community of readers seeking to celebrate our friends, family and faith more fully. And if you really, really think I should have blogged about politics – don't worry, I am sure the next presidential cycle will start in about 20 months!

One last reminder ...

Unless you live under a rock, you know today is election day. Tonight the phone calls, mailers and commercials will finally end, and America will have made huge decisions that will effect our state and federal government. Frankly, as Americans we will make choices that change the world today. I hope you will take the time to go and vote. It's our privledge, our honor and our responsibility to do so. So go vote!

Planning for Peace ….

While our jack –o-lantern was starting to decompose outside, Pete and I sat down this weekend to have our holiday season chat. I know your kids are probably still clinging to the ceiling from too much candy, and the thought of Christmas is a bit nauseating, bit stick with me here. A few years ago I realized that if I didn't start planning for the holiday season early, and I do mean early, then the whole month of December looked like a hectic grumpy mess and afterwards I felt like I had missed it. So Pete and I sat down this weekend to look at the last two months of the year and plan out what has got to get done and also what we want to do for fun. First we put on our calendars our obligations – holiday meals, birthdays, and family visits. Then we made a list of the holiday related work that needs to get done; decorating, shopping, cards, and some major cleaning before his mother and grandmother join us for Thanksgiving. Looking at our to do list we figured out how much time each of us will need and then plugged into the calendar two work days when I will hire a sitter or set up play dates so we can get it all done. There were some house projects that we would like to get done, but they are not absolutely necessary, so they came off the list for this year. Last, but definitely not least, we made a list of the fun things we want to do with the girls this holiday season. We looked up the dates for our local Christmas parade, the zoo's holiday light event, and local museums family holiday days. Looking at how full our calendar already was, we realized we needed to pick just two events. We chose the zoo and the parade and we blocked off those evenings on the calendar.

Does this seem ridiculously type A? Believe me, I am not naturally type A! There is a bigger picture here. I want our holiday season to have meaning. I want Pete and I to be thoughtful about what we do with our children during this time of year, because it is just so easy to make December an exhausting whirlwind. I want us to be on the same page, so that our priorities are the same, not one of us thinking we'll be finishing our basement this month and the other one assuming we'll be going to all of the wonderful holiday season festivals around town. This is our first step in planning for a peaceful holiday season.