Blest With This Life: A Blessed Advent

I haven't gotten overly excited for Christmas this year. It's not that I'm not looking forward to it, I'm just trying to spend more time focusing on Advent this year. Usually I start getting all my Christmas decorations out right after Thanksgiving. It all goes up at once and stays up until mid February. But this year I'm doing things different. I decided to get some Jesse Tree ornaments and put those one by one on our Christmas tree. We were disappointed to find out that on Dec 8th when we went to get our tree there were only a handful left and none to be desired. I guess that's the price you pay when you don't start celebrating the day after Thanksgiving! So, up went our artificial tree.

I had high hopes for our Jesse Tree. I had visions of us sitting on the couch each evening as a family reading the bible stories from the Jesus Storybook Bible and then carefully placing the ornament on the tree after reciting the prayer. Hopefully one of these years we will be able to do that, but I realized that this year is not the year. Nevertheless, I will continue to do it, even if it's just me that's listening.

I'm doing something different with our nativity set also. Each Sunday I will be putting out new pieces. We started with the Angel and star, then added the shepherds and animals the second week. I really wanted Andrew to help and he has actually taken an interest. However this has resulted in my angel being decapitated and the figures being rearranged everyday. No Andrew, the camel doesn't go there. That's were baby Jesus will be. All of this has made me realize that I have good intentions to start Advent traditions, but two years old is just too young. I need to relax just a bit.

This is the nativity set that I set up in the basement on top of our piano. This is proof that no matter how high I put things, Andrew will find a way to get to them. These will end up broken, it's just a matter of time!