Advent Devotional

For the last 5 years we have enjoyed doing the "Advent Jesse Tree" as a devotional each Christmas season. This year we thought that we would change things up a little bit.
We decided to use the "Jesus Bible Story Book" as our daily devotion. It works perfectly with advent as there are 24 stories leading up to Jesus's birth and each story is written in a way that points to Christ.
We have greatly enjoyed this time as a family as we read through this story book Bible together. We made some ornaments (one to go with each story) to hang on our little Christmas tree. So with the help of this printable, some printable tags, the laminator, twine, a hole punch, and scissors we made our ornaments. We look forward to using them again sometime in the years to come.

Almond Cupcakes

Friday morning started off with the making of many delicious Almond Cupcakes. This is something I grew up making with my parents and now our family has inherited the tradition. We mixed and baked into the early afternoon while enjoying Christmas music. Here are a few pictures of the baking fun...and the recipe!

Almond Cupcakes

dough:
2 cups butter
2 eggs
2 cups sugar
4 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

filling:
2 eggs
2 cups sugar
2 cups (1 pound) almond paste
3 Tablespoons lemon juice

1. Cream together butter, 2 eggs and 2 cups sugar. Then add flour and salt, mix together to make a soft dough. Fill small cupcake tins 1/2 full and spread out like pie crust in each cupcake hole.
2. To make filling cream together filling ingredients. Then put one small spoon full into each cupcake pan; or use a zip lock bag with one corner cut off and squeeze the almond paste into each cupcake pan. 
3. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Put four tins (2 if they are double sized tins) on the top rack of the oven. Bake for 9 minutes. After 9 minutes rotate and turn pans and bake for another 3 to 4 minutes. 

Hot Apple Cider

I thought that I would share with all of you the recipe that we use to make our Hot Apple Cider. I have fond memories of my mom making this Cider when I was a little girl. It has become a favorite in my family too. It is perfect for a cold fall or winter day.

Hot Apple Cider


4 cups apple juice
1 cup water
1/2 cup orange juice
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1, 3 inch stick cinnamon

Combine all ingredients and simmer for 15 minutes or combine all ingredients and warm in crock-pot for several hours. Enjoy!

A Christmas Tradition

For a little girls who
is our ballerina

The day after thanksgiving usually finds us pulling down boxes filled with Christmas decorations, setting up our Christmas tree, putting up garlands and lights, and adding Christmas cheer to our home. The girls find such delight in seeing what each box holds.

The much anticipated activity of the day is the decorating of the Christmas tree. The girls love rediscovering each ornaments and finding a spot (usually somewhere on the lower forth of the tree) on the tree for each ornament.

For a little girl who loves to
play with her  baby dolls

Each year on Christmas day the girls get their own special ornament. Something that represents the last year. Each of our girls also have their own colored ribbon. If they make an ornament or were given an ornament we tie their color ribbon on the ornament so we know in coming years which ornament belongs to who.

For a little girls who loves
 to play dress-up

My mom started this tradition with my sisters and I. When we moved out of the house, she boxed all of our ornaments for us to use in decorating our own Christmas tree. I now have all my childhood ornaments hanging on my tree. What fun memories they bring back each year as they are hung on the tree.

Thanksgiving Fun

We are greatly looking forward to Thanksgiving! We are enjoying doing a study of the first Thanksgiving and of the Pilgrims. We are also attempting to make our own lapbooks. We will see how it all turns out.

With this time of thanksgiving we are enjoying the fun traditions that come with it, like our Thanksgiving tree. And this year I am looking forward to starting a new tradition. Thanksgiving coupon books for the girls. Like most all of my ideas this one did not originate with me. I came across this idea on the Girltalk blog a few weeks ago.

These Thanksgiving coupon books will be for my girls to redeem between Thanksgiving and Christmas. When I first came across this idea I did not know how I could fit one more thing into the few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea because I hope it will help me to slow down and enjoy this season with my girls. These are the kinds of things that I need to be doing with them to enjoy them and this season.

Here are a few of our coupons:

• A day off of School (for Madisen).
• A day off of chores.
• Your choice of a game to be played with mom.
• Hot chocolate date with mom in her bedroom (just the two of us).
• Book reading time with mom.
• Craft time with mom.
• Your choice of breakfast.

I found a fall looking gift tag and after a little cutting and pasting on the computer I printed them off onto four (I am making a set for Chris to :-) different colors of card stock, cut them out and hole punched the tops and tied them together with raffia. Now they sit waiting to be given out on Thanksgiving morning.

I pray that you all have a blessed Thanksgiving!

A New Journey Started

Today starts the first day of school for Madisen. The books have been purchased, teacher manuals read, craft supplies collected, and many prayers made.

Last year the thought of home schooling was very overwhelming to me. After much pray, Chris and I both felt the Lord leading us to home school Madisen. After attending a home school convention this April, a kind friend lending me her curriculum, many other books and supplies purchased, and school bins prepared, we are ready for school. We have also spent our summer working on our morning routine so that our school days would run smoothly. And now it is with much excitement and anticipation that we start this new journey of home schooling.

I pray that the Lord would bless this new adventure and journey, that many wonderful memories would be made, much learning would happen, and that through it all our little one would grow in her knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Our Family Jesse Tree

Over the last three years we have done a Jesse Tree with our girls. Over these few years this tradition has grown very dear to my heart! It has been such a blessing to watch, with each year that passes, our girls learn more and more about why it is we celebrate Christmas.

We first learned about this tradition while we were living in Southern California when our senior pastor shared it with the congregation. Then a group of women got together to make and exchange the ornaments that go along with this tree. This is our second Christmas here in Indiana (away from California). Everyone at our last church hold a very special place in our hearts, it is fun to remember each lady/family who made each of the ornaments as we put them on our tree.

Each December we go through "The Advent Jesse Tree" by Dean Lambert. Starting on the 1st of December and leading up to the 25th. We do a devotional out of this book and then place the corresponding ornament on our little Jesse Tree. Each devotional has scripture to look up, questions to answer, suggested songs to sing and a prayer.

Each devotional helps trace and explain God's plan of salvation from Creation by detailing the heritage and lineage of Jesus Christ. It is wonderful to see through these devotions how God thought and planned out every small detail of Christ's birth and on up to his death on the cross. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:15 God's gift of His Son is truly an "indescribable gift".

This tradition is a highlight of our days leading up to Christmas. It helps us to pause amidst all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and focus on Christ's birth and why it is we are celebrating His birth. It is a true blessing to see our girls answer the questions given in the book and with each year watch their knowledge and understanding grow.

December 5th

December 5th marks a day of much fun in our household. I know that for most of you it is probably just another day in the month of December. For us it is the day that St. Nick comes and brings all of the Christmas presents. That's right, it is not Santa Clause that comes to our house but St. Nick, the Dutch Santa Clause. This is what I grew up doing and what we have carried on with our girls.

This year our evening started with dinner out together. Then we made some special deliveries of our own. Then we came home to wait for St. Nick to come.

This is Macaylee just as we got home from dinner. In this snow suite, daddy calls her "his little pink marshmellow".

First we placed our wodden shoes outside our front door.

then we waited ......

and waited.............

~

Then there was a knock at the door! We rushed to the door in hopes of catching a glimp of Him.

~

Here is Maddie trying to get the front door open.

~

You see, St. Nick and his helper Swarta Pete, leave the gifts in a burlap sack by the front door, knock and run away. We were not able to catch a glimpse of him this time, but there is always next year.

~

Then we had fun unwrapping and playing with our gifts!

Summer Poster

Madisen has been asking me for several weeks now "when is summer going to start". With all the rain we have been having and with not having the end of school to define the start of our summer it is hard to put a start date on it. Well, I guess you can say that our summer officially started two days ago, when we made our summer poster.

I stumbled across this idea for a summer poster on this blog and followed a link to also see it on this blog. I thought that it would be a great project for us to do. This poster has listed all the activities and things that we will be doing this summer. Every time we do one of the activities on the poster we will place a sticker next to the corresponding activity, some of the activities will have multiple stickers by summers end.

Madisen had so much fun thinking up all the things that we were going to do this summer, helping to decorate the poster, making the poster and has already enjoyed placing stickers next to the things we have done so far. Even though Miriam is still a little young to yet fully understand the poster, she also enjoys placing stickers by the things we have done. I think this is such a great way for children to see and look forward to all that they will be doing this summer. What fun it will be at summers end, to see all great things we have done, and then help them understand all that they have to be thankful for. It is little projects like this that we can use to help our children learn to be joyful always & to give thanks as 1 Thessalonians 5:16 teaches.