Too much work

We decided to make a handprint wreath this week. Yikes! That was a lot of cutting for Mommy! While its cute, I don't think I'd make it again. Sophia got bored after I traced her hands even though she was helping glue on the paper plate. With all the crafts we do, some are bound to fail! I much preferred the tearing paper wreath we made a few weeks ago!

Random crafts

We recently made an Advent chain::countdown to Jesus' birthday after seeing our great friends Amanda and Addie over at @walkbyfaith post their pictures. Thanks for the idea, friends!

Also made some fun and easy stick people that we love (we will add more, but our printer ran out of ink)

You can see a reindeer near our stick people. We used Sophias hands to make antlers and glued it onto a brown felt triangle and then added googly eyes and a red nose. Fun, easy and quick!

One project we tried was a flop! Well, mostly. I let S paint snow. I heard it was fun and cool to watch it melt into colorful puddles (on a pizza/cookie pan) Mostly it was tricky, cold and then Liam got into it when I forgot to put it away and after S alerting me I found green speckles EVERYWHERE in the kids room. Yikes. Luckily most of them came out. I should have taken a picture. But I was frantic when I saw it so I didn't stop. :-)

Advent/ Devotionals

How does your family do devotions together? We wondered for a long time what family devotions looked like. How do you start? What do you do with little ones? How do we best teach our kids the word alongside us and keep their attention....I had picked up the book Word Filled Familes while visiting some friends in California and visiting the awesome church and library at Grace Community Church this fall. It gave Kevin and I good starting place for the two of us and we also started the devotional "Tying the Knot Tighter" together as well.


In mid November we finally just went for it with the kids! :-) We bring the kids little chairs and have them sit with their guitars and bibles. From mid November until Thanksgiving we read Psalms 23 and then did some worship songs with Kev leading on guitar. Then starting after Thanksgiving we bought a Nativity set (the Fischer price one has been on sale for $13.99 @ Target) and started reading the Christmas story out of Luke before worship. We sing away in a Manager, one hymn, and then whatever other Christmas or worship songs the kids are asking for.

I know that kids are sponges but it still shocks me how much of the Luke passage Sophia already has memorized. She asks immediately after dinner now for the bible and singing which is really nice. Liam will stay in the chair for half of the time on a good night. I try to keep him on my lap if he will let me, but sometimes we just let him wander in their room while we do this.

I thought about printing out something for Advent, I know there was a free Jessee tree advent reading people were talking about, I looked at it, and thought it didn't meet our families needs this year so we are sticking with our schedule. After Christmas I am going to be on the lookout for a discounted Advent calendar.

I have no idea what passage we will move to after Christmas....

So, what does your family do? We'd love to hear your ideas?