Merry Christmas!

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas with your families. We stayed in NC this year. My dad came over to spend Christmas with us. I always think it is nice to have a grandparent around to enjoy the children's laughter and excitement about Christmas. It makes it special for all of us.
I am always trying to come up with things to do to make the Christmas season more meaningful for the kids. I guess I'm trying to distract them from the materialism and make it more spiritual, more about the giving and less about the getting. This year we hosted a Happy Birthday Jesus party at our home. We invited our homeschool friends that we don't get to socialize with very often, made a birthday cake and sang "Happy Birthday to Jesus". We decided to make the Jesus portion of the cake white to represent that He was pure and sinless, and the manger portion of the cake chocolate, to represent our "dirty" sin. For a craft we made homemade nativity characters out of wood blocks. They dressed them in scrap fabric, ribbons and tassles and put baby Jesus in a manger of glued together popsicle sticks. It was a blast.
This year along with the homemade theme (wink, wink) we made homemade Christmas cards. Why is it that every year I forget how huge of a project sending out the cards can be? The making of the picture, deciding upon which one to use, how the card will look, actually making or printing a card, addressing all the envelopes, stamping and return addressing and delivering them to the mailbox can be a chore! BUT I still love receiving them in the mail and that is why I go to all the trouble each year, because if even one person enjoys it as much as I do, then it was worth it!
For my other Christmas project I had the girls write Luke 2 as their handwriting assingment each day. I divided it into 1-3 verse sections and they wrote in their best handwriting with a picture to accompany the story for each day. I had no idea how wonderful their art work was going to turn out. This is something that I will keep for them to look back at when the are grown.
As always we contiued our Jesse tree ornament devotion each day leading up to Christmas. We may decide to do another ornament exchange next year for some extra families that would like to participate. (Let me know if you're local and are interested.)
The girls also sang in our Christmas Eve service at church this year. The children's choir prepared three songs, O Come Little Children, Away in a Manger, and Go Tell It On The Mountain. Emily sang a duet with her best friend for a verse of the first song and did a great job. Her eyes sparkle when she sings.
I hope that you found some new ways to celebrate our Saviour's birth this year. If not I hope that I have inspired you to do something different next year. Go to a different church service, drive an alternate route home to take a look at the Christmas lights, spend time with a loved one, snuggle in with some hot chocolate and a Christmas movie that you haven't watched in a while - whatever it is, enjoy it!

sorry for the delay

The pictures are finally posted. Hopefully you will soon have a hard copy in your hands as your Christmas card. If you are planning on mailing a card to us - email me first, as our mailing address has changed from last year.
We love getting your Christmas cards!!!!
jennifershand@bellsouth.net