Well we've made it through week two with a little bit of sickness to boot us into week three but at least I'm getting this post up. If you missed our Advent fun in Week 1 just click on the link to hear all about it.
This is the Advent chaos that's been going on in our household this week :
St. Nicholas Feast Day
We opened week 2 of Advent with the feast day of Saint Nicholas which is also the feast day of my oldest child. So we spent the day watching a Saint Nicholas movie from CCC of America titled Nicholas: the boy who became Santa, reading about Saint Nicholas and how he fits in this time of celebration of Baby Jesus, and of course enjoying the goodies that Saint Nicholas brought us and our shoes. I also made my son this Saint Nicholas peg doll for his special feast day.
Immaculate Conception
December 8th we celebrated the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Mother. With this coloring picture from Catholic Icing, I explained to my kids how Mary was born to St. Anne free from original sin. To honor our Blessed Mother, we all wore blue. And we met up with two other Catholic families and colored this picture from Catholic Icing (grab your copy at this link).
San Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe (Feast days Dec. 9th and Dec. 12th)
This is my oldest's "favorite Mary". Ha! So we go big or go home for these feasts! First we watched the CCC of America's San Juan Diego video, followed by coloring an Our Lady of Guadalupe coloring sheet you can get at Catholic Playground (grab it at this link). We cut out and taped this picture to some sheets of packing paper (last year we used a brown paper grocery bag) we still had in our house, cut out and whole for the head and voila', we have a tilma for the kids to wear!
We also have an ornament of Our Lady of Guadalupe my husband found last year on clearance at a Hallmark store. We placed it on our Jesse Tree as a daily reminder of this amazing miracle, that the Immacute Conception was about to bring the Word Incarnate into the world. What a beautiful Advent celebration we have two weeks before Christmas! Hanging the ornament in our living area was a great reminder to us all to say a quick prayer random times of day to Our Lady.
Blue Knights meeting:
My oldest is part of a Blue Knights Boy's Club in which my husband, being the good dad he is, is the leader. This week was their monthly meeting and they learned about the virtue "Fear of the Lord", which was a hard one for me as a child to really understand. But my husband explained that just like parents need to sometimes discipline children when they make poor choices, so does our loving Father in Heaven. My husband explained that Our Lord will do everything in His power to keep us close to Him, safe from evil and sometimes those things may feel like punishments but they are permitted out of love for us. As a mother, I totally get "Fear of the Lord" now and pray my children will always fear upsetting or hurting Our Lord enough that it will keep them on a straighter path than I have trod. Here's a picture of the delicious snack I made for the kids. I didn't have any purple sprinkles for Advent, so Christmas colors it was.
Still going strong:
Our Jesse Tree Ornaments, Advent Calendar and Sacrifice Manger are still going strong here in this house. As you can see from the above picture, my little Bean, loves the tree. Some days we do better than others and sometimes we miss a day and have to catch up on our Jesse Tree ornaments but it's still been so much fun seeing my son internalize more and more of these bible stories I've been reading him over the past few years!
And finally, our family dinners around the Advent wreath have been such a blessing. My family is enjoying it so much, it usually is listed as one of our daily "Three Favorite Things" (post coming for more information on this one) for one family member or another each day.
How is your Advent season coming along? Have any other great ideas to share?
I'll see you back here next week for our weekly Advent round-up!
Many Blessings to you and yours this Advent Season,
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