Getting Ready

This week like any birthday celebration around here I started creating our living room into party central.  Well at least my kids think so.  As we come down to a week before Christmas or as my kids know Jesus' birthday I thought like any other birthday I would decorate for it.  As this is our first Christmas to not open presents we want to focus on Jesus.  We have done a birthday cake for Jesus in the past but this time we are going all out as if I we were celebrating for one of the family members birthday.  Usually it is theme based so I have been going with using small crowns, Christmas lights, Jesus' name and decorating with stars.  We will have a special birthday dinner, birthday cake, a craft, game and we will give our presents to Jesus.  Ev is wondering how we are going to do that!  Oh and sometime when Todd gets back from his trip to a local orphanage we will sit down as a family and go through the Samaritan's Purse Gift Catolog 2011.  We are excited this year to be able to look through the online catolog and have the kids pick out what they want to purchase using some of their money they have gotten from family to buy things for people in need all over the world. 

Preparing for Christmas

 I know this picture is fuzzy but I love how Elijah is just hanging out on the couch letting everyone else do the hard work!

We have two small trees for the kids rooms.  I let them put the tiny ornaments on their trees this year.

This is our Advent calendar I made a few years ago.  The pocket hold either a picture card or character.  We tell them the story of Jesus' birth every night and add a picture to the top of the calendar and a character to go in the kids nativity set.  The repetition helps them retell the story with us.  It is excited because this year they retell the story in more detail than before.

 Every night for our Bible story time we tell the story and have the kids tell us the story.  We add a person to their nativity set and then we pray for a people group.  A few years ago when Todd and I were beginning our family Christmas traditions we wanted to put emphasis on the nations.  So we made picture ornaments of about 15 people groups.  We hang them on the tree and in the previous years we let the kids pick one each night and we would pray for them.  This year the kids each picked a people group and we have been focusing on those three groups the whole month. 

These are the 3 people groups that the kids chose to pray for. 

In addition to our sharing/ the kids learning the birth of Jesus story and praying for other peoples to know Him on the 5 Sundays prior to Christmas we light the Advent candle and sing together as a family.  We really enjoy preparing our hearts and teaching the kids about our Savior during the month of December.  And as we were convicted a couple of years ago it seems out of place to lead up to Jesus' birth day and then open lots of presents and in a way celebrate ourselves.  So this year we will not open presents on Christmas.  We were in America last year and the kids learn really fast that Christmas means getting new toys and gifts.  We don't want our kids to think of Christmas in that way so we are going to open presents on New Year's Eve instead.  As a family we are going to be participating in helping the local people around us as well as finding ways that the kids can give "gifts" to the people group they chose.

 I saw this in a magazine I like seeing how our family has grown over the last several years!

 I need to finish Todd's stocking!  I need to do that ASAP. :) 



If you want to see some more really great pictures from our Christmas check out my sister in law's blog at www.karamoseby.com !! You can see Ian smiling in her pictures. :)

Christmas Round 2

Please can we open them!!


Ev handing out the presents

Aunt Kara getting a good angle.

Ev was even helping me open my presents

He does a good job with the drill... until he started aiming at people's heads on purpose!

Enjoying Uncle Josh's phone

I think daddy secretly wishes he got a sword too.

Ian can smile...really!

twirling princess Ev

Daddy coaching them

Ian and Todd geting some action with the foam swords

He had to take a break and eat some fruit snacks.

Todd's family waited until we arrived back in town to open presents together. The kids were really excited about it. We started off the morning with cinnamon rolls and Aunt Kara and Uncle Josh coming over. The kids couldn't wait for us to all finish breakfast it was killing them seeing all of the presents for them to open.

Ian had figured out how to open presents and how to pull treats out of a stocking with my family. When he opened new clothes he wanted to put them on immediately. It was too fun watching everyone. We are very thankful that we were able to spend this Christmas with family.