Adventures in Advent: Finishing Up

I know it's past Advent and most of you are all done Christmasing too but I want to save this for my own future reference. Carry on with New Years Celebrations and ignore me over here :-)

The last bit of the month was all about nature and the the nutcracker.

We went on a Christmas hike and spent our time looking for red, white and green things. We found some red leaves and red berries, white flowers and some while mold/fungus stuff growing in the creek and there was still some green grass to be seen. Spending time outside and just talking about Jesus while we walked made for a nice morning.

Lucy had been asking for a drawing lesson so I tried to show her how to draw a Christmas tree but due to "attitude" issues and frustration, we stopped mid-stream. But we did have success making some simple Christmas tree ornaments.

They really loved the glue and buttons part so these things weigh about a pound each and I had to pick out the sturdies branches to hang them on.

And of course we had to read a few Christmas tree books: Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree, The Jesus Tree, Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree and the Little Fir Tree and eventually got around to putting our own tree up.

Then we got our copy of The Nutcracker from the library. Lucy actually remembered the book from last year as soon as she saw the cover and could tell me a good portion of the story. We listened to it all week and watched a few clips on youtube. Jonah spent the rest of the week asking for "nut and mouse video?" every time I turned on the computer and if we ever watched a clip that wasn't the big fight scene he would say "No, where the mouses?"

We tried a different drawing lesson and this one went much better. And I think her nutcracker turned out pretty well despite her unorthodox color choices.

On Friday I had to scramble to find one more nutcracker "craft" because Lucy really wanted craft time so I printed this for them to color and cut out. Jonah thought his looked angry so he torn the eyes off and draw "happy eyes" on instead.

For the nativity part, we added the next to last pieces of our set on top of the piano (just waiting on Mary and Baby Jesus until the Big Day!) and then made our own set from these paper printables.

and went with some friends to visit a living nativity down the road a bit. That part is a tradition so this was our fifth year (and our first to get a good picture of it!).