It's Christmas Eve afternoon, and I'm sitting here reflecting on the marathon that is the month of December. We moms work and plan and stress to make this season a magical one for our children. One of my children was griping a bit yesterday afternoon because our gingerbread houses came from a kit rather than being made from scratch. I was flattered that everyone thought my from-scratch gingerbread is so much better than the storebought, pre-made variety. But... mom's tired! Mom's worked her rear end off for the past four weeks, and something's gotta give!
I feel very pleased with how things turned out this Advent season. I was able to do almost every activity with my children that I wanted to do.
Yesterday I felt so worn down. I still had two important packages that had not yet arrived. We had errands and appointments, the weather was rainy and dreary. I'd been up till midnight far too many nights in the past few weeks than I care to admit. I had a headache and was just sure I was coming down with some awful illness. Today I got to sleep in until 8:00 am, and when I awoke, I felt completely refreshed, happy, and ready to take on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Such a change from the depression that has been hounding me all month. All month I've been preaching to everyone around me how Advent is about awaiting the Light, and the Light really did arrive!
Advent Week One:
On Sunday evenings we light the candles on our Advent wreath and have a short devotional with carol-singing and scripture-reading. Big improvements this year--three out of the four weeks, the children were all well-behaved and participated! We discovered the secret with Preston is to make him a nice big bowl of oatmeal to eat while we are reading and singing.
During the week, I focused with Sariah and Preston on our Waldorf Advent theme. I used this plan: http://tinypeasant.com/tinyadvent/ I loved that it had scripture references for the four weeks of minerals, plants, animals, and humans. Week 1 is mineral week, and we talked about the ways in which minerals may have participated in the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem and in baby Jesus' birth.
We began our Advent nature table with a path of stars for Joseph and Mary to walk, and the nothing else on the table except the stable, rocks, and shells.
We made Christmas ornament crystals, and they actually worked!
Then we wet-felted stones for the nature table.
At the end of the first week of Advent comes St. Nicholas Day. Preston's kindergarten story involved St. Nicholas, so I needlefelted one.
And a little elf visitor to go along with it:
Sariah did some needlefelting as well:
Week 2 of Advent is plant week.
Moss from our yard and wooden trees appeared on the nature table.
We added some new songs to our repertoire, particularly "The Old Man in the Woods" from The Christmas Star songbook. This was the perfect week to choose and decorate our Christmas tree.
We made cinnamom/applesauce ornaments and strung popcorn and cranberries to reflect the contribution of plants to the season. Sariah spent 1.5 hours straight making the garlands, which is a miracle in and of itself. I also bought a lovely angel ornament to add to the tree.
Week 2 brought two lovely festivals of Light. First came Hanukkah. Since Sariah has been studying Old Testament stories this year, we thought it appropriate to celebrate a few Jewish festivals, and Hanukkah is not to be missed.
We made menorahs from salt dough.
Preston was particularly enamored with Hanukkah. Every time we sang Christmas carols from that point on, he always insisted on singing "Oh Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah, come light the menorah! Let's have a party, we'll all dance the hora!"
The dreidl game.
And latkes to eat!
The second festival of the week was St. Lucia Day. We lost Sariah's crown of candles, so I got to needlefelt a new one... only a 3-hour project. St. Lucia Day means so much to Sariah; I couldn't not make a new wreath.
Week Three
Sariah blows out the pink candle on Gaudete Sunday.
Since this was animal week, we made birdseed ornaments to hang outdoors.
At the beginning of the week, we told the legend of "The Nightingale: The Bird Who Sang with the Angels", so of course we needed a little beeswax bird to go along with it.
We also made molded beeswax ornaments to go along with our theme of animals. Those are pictured above with our Christmas Tree pictures.
The main story of our week was Super Sam, who continued his adventures with each festival and on this week participated in a spiral walk in honor of both the Winter solstice and Christmas.
We made a little table top spiral from leftover bits of evergreen and little fake lanterns from bits of beeswax.
Week Four
Then came the fourth week, human week. Usually by this week I am so up to my ears in chaos that all my lovely plans go out the window, but this year, not so. I have always wanted to make Nativity transparencies, and this year we finally did!
Sariah was the creator of the beautiful transparency in the middle. She worked hard and long and through many frustrations to get this to turn out the way she wanted.
Humans in the form of shepherds appeared on the nature table, and by mid week Mary and Joseph were very very close to the stable. Preston has definitely used this as a "calendar" to figure out how close Christmas Day is. Every day he has checked to see if Mary and Joseph are in the "tunnel" yet.
Finally, Dallin was out of school, and it was time for the kids' favorite tradition--decorating gingerbread houses. When we lived in Utah, we got to do this with their cousins, but for now, it is just us.
Forgive the messy kitchen--this is real life!
I loved how Preston sat on Daddy's lap the whole time he was decorating his house.
The little guy kept us in stitches the entire evening. He got up from the table and promptly announced that he was "shiny and clean", an apparent reference to the disastrous messes that each of his siblings left at their places. Notice how his house is very symmetrical and orderly.
Sariah's goal was just to see how much candy she could fit on one house.
And Dallin just likes to see how creative he can be--and usually succeeds.
Now we're off to Part Two of this holiday season--Christmas itself!
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