During the month of December, I like to read Christmas books with my children. They are much older now, at 17, 15, and 11, and my voice is very raspy this week, so I'm not getting much reading done. I like to read one of Arnold Ytreeide's three books during the days and weeks before Christmas but with my sore throat (raspiness) and the fact that I was out of town 3 days last week, I have not even started this year's selection Jotham's Journey, the first of the three books. It seems that we won't be reading it this year but that is okay because we are getting in several FUN trips that I posted about earlier.
Besides our outings, we like to make peanut butter balls (also called buckeyes in some places) at my parents' home each year. She used to make them alone and save them for closer to Christmas but we all like to snack on them each week when we visit so we volunteered to come and help her make more. We will go and do this sometime this week, I think. They are very easy to make with a short ingredient list of peanut butter, chocolate, powdered sugar, and butter or margarine. They are a bit messy to make though as the peanut butter mixture tends to cake onto your hands.
Sometimes the kids help out and other times they don't. It doesn't matter though, it is a labor of love. Plus my sister, mom, and I are doing it together and enjoying some good fellowship. When we get done catching up on what all is going on with each other, we will put on one of our many Christmas movies. Mom has quite a collection that she has recorded from television through the years. I may have to post about my favorite Christmas movies later.
In years past, I have done a daily advent with the kids. I thought I had blogged about it before but I cannot find it so I'll tell you about it now. You wrap up a small item for each day of December through Christmas and number then or be sure to keep them in order some way. Each day you let the children open the item and then you share the scripture and how that item relates to the season. I got it from a forum on AOL y-e-a-r-s ago. I couldn't find my copy this year so I looked online and just as I suspected, someone did indeed, have it out there in cyberspace.
My mother started something with us girls, my sisters and I, about a dozen or more years ago. It is something I look forward to every year. Maybe you can adapt it to some special people in your life. My mother takes my sisters and I out to eat and then to see a movie. She pays for it all. She is such a giving person!!! This year Tiffany will be joining us. Mom probably would have let her join us sooner but I thought she should wait until she is older. She is 11 this year and you cannot wait to do EVERYTHING until you are 13, so when asked this year, I said ok. She is very excited. Truth be told, I'm excited too.
We made a candy wreath one year. We liked it but it was made with peppermints and those are NOT my favorite, at all, but I just saw that you could make this with almost any individually wrapped candy. Hmmm, I wonder if I could do it with Hershey Kisses? I actually think we got the idea from another activity we have done in the past, the Advent Calendar.
The Advent Calendar is really neat because it has several things to do each day. It has a recipe, craft, online game, e-card, coloring page and/or activity page every day. It has several of these each day, not necessarily all of them every day. Please preview, as each person is different with what they let their children come in contact with. When my children we very little, we did not do ANY thing with Santa because we did not want to confuse them. Some of the movies with Santa in them now make some very good "arguments" FOR Santa's existence. I never wanted my children to question if Jesus was real because of me telling them about fictional characters. As they got older and could definitely tell the difference between real and make-believe, I have allowed the Santa thing.
Molly has a nice little advent scripture calendar that is nice to have and use. I'm trying to find it on her website but cannot. She gave it as a freebie to newsletter subscribers last year. Basically all you do is write a scripture reference that tells of Christmas (either prophecy or actual events). Then daily you lift the flap with the date on it and read the verse for the day.
I think that is enough of an epistle for one day. I'll go for now. Enjoy your holiday season!
(Me and my dd, Tiffany on an easy to climb tree limb on vacation in VA in 2007.) These are my ramblings on homeschooling and whatever else comes to mind.
Counting Down
The Holidays are over and I'm not quite ready to start a new count down yet. Maybe I should start a counting up the number of days I've stayed on my "diet".
