Merry Ordinary Time!

My poor neglected blog! I had all these good intentions of doing a post about our Advent & Christmas and even with 12 days of Christmas to get to it, I couldn't manage it! So here we are in Ordinary Time and I finally have some time for an update. Here's what we've been up to:

- A quiet Advent. I tried prepping for Advent again this year in the hopes that it would be quiet and focused. I guess I got what I asked for! The kids were sick a lot, in the course of a month one or more family member had colds, pink eye, and the stomach bug. Therefore we missed a lot of activities in December... playgroup, ECFE class, a St. Nick party that I was really looking forward to, and a lot of the fun I had planned for Advent was pushed to the Christmas season. In the end though, it was just what we needed. Not the sickness, necessarily, but more quiet time as a family at home, talking about and preparing for Our Lord's birth. And, happily, we were all healthy for the holiday!

- A joyful Christmas. I worried that since a lot of the things I had planned for Advent had been canceled, that the kids wouldn't appreciate Christmas as much. I was totally wrong. Nathaniel in particular really looked forward to celebrating Jesus' birth, and for the first time I think he really "got it". The kids made Jesus a birthday cake for the first time on Christmas Eve. Then after Christmas Day brunch they got to sing to Jesus and dig in! I think this might become a fun tradition every year! After each Mass surrounding Christmas and afterwards, Nathaniel would beg to go up to the front of Church to see the large manger scene, kneel, and say a prayer. Celebrating Christmas is truly a season long thing for our family... we see Jeff's extended family Christmas Eve, my extended family Christmas Day, when we drive back to MN we have our own little family celebration a few days later, and then on New Year's Day we celebrated with the MN Yorks. Even though Jeff and I only bought a couple of girly toys for Mary and only books for Nathaniel this year, the loot from the grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, and great aunts and uncles makes our playroom look like Toys R Us exploded in there. The kids have not been bored for a millisecond since!

- Jumping headfirst into a busy semester. Jeff had two weeks off from work at the end of the year, so we soaked up a lot of family time and then it was back to the routine. We started up homeschooling lessons again, Nathaniel's swimming lessons began this week, Playgroup started back up, our ECFE class begins at the end of this month, Nathaniel started Preschool of Religion class on Sundays, and my office manager duties for the Preschool of Religion program began as well. Even with all this, we do still end up with some slower paced mornings and I'm trying to enjoy them before Nathaniel starts Junior Kindergarten at our parish school next fall. *sniff, sniff*

- And finally, I've been doing a lot of scrapbooking. I applied and was accepted onto a Creative Team for a digital scrapbooking store, which means free supplies in exchange for my promotion of their designs. Here is some of my recent work with our Advent & Christmas pictures:









We are looking forward to all this New Year brings us!