Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Bryan and I ate some delicious chocolate earthquake cake for breakfast on Christmas morning. Because of that and the fact that we left Jackson a little later than expected, we decided to make a "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" brownie this year instead of our traditional chocolate cake. Seth was excited as soon as we sat it on the table...

and he just loved the candles!

We sang the Happy Birthday song to our baby Jesus (from our nativity scene)
and then we enjoyed our brownie.

Then as we were eating we used our laptop at the table to make our donations to different charities. We are hoping to make this a tradition each year before opening our presents. I saw the idea of reading the book, The King's Christmas List from a blog called Impress Your Kids a few weeks ago and loved the idea of giving before receiving. I bought our copy of The King's Christmas List about a week and a half ago and we read it that night, but in future years we will probably read it while we are eating our cake or brownie or whatever else. This year I chose to donate a goat and Seth picked out a flock of chickens (by pointing and signing "yes") from Heifer International. Bryan decided he would like to give to Charity Water. Then we finished our Advent Study by reading the entire story of Jesus' birth. Afterward we gave Seth his gift.

It was a homemade car mat. My mom and I were rummaging through her closet during Thanksgiving and we discovered an old piece of fabric that she had used in her classrooms throughout the years. The fabric was more than 25 years old and I remember playing with it as a kid. It was in great condition, but it needed a backing fabric and the edges needed to be hemmed. So I brought it home, washed it, and added the backing to it. It was such a special moment when Seth figured out he could drive his little cars on it. I hope it provides him with lots of years of fun, too. This Christmas was filled with such special memories and we were truly able to focus on the birth of our Savior!!!

Touchable Nativity Set

At the end of November I got an email from a friend asking me if I would like a Fisher Price Nativity Set (ours does not play music). So a couple of days later I went by to pick up the brand new in-the-box set to include in our Christmas season. It has been one of the highlights to Advent in our home and Seth has played with it more than just about anything else during the month of December.
Sometimes some of the characters turn up missing for a while and other characters are added to the scene. For instance, Tommy the Tonka Truck visits sometimes and mechanics stand in for shepherds since it didn't come with them. Even though our set isn't always perfect, Seth has figured out the most important part. He loves to keep Baby Jesus near. It makes our hearts swell as parents.

This little scene has been so meaningful this season it even inspired this year's Christmas card, so Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

First Day of Winter

Today is the first day of winter! In an effort to celebrate the beginning of each season, we made snowman cookies today. While our seasonal festivities were not as extravagant as our first day of Autumn celebration, we did have fun!

We rolled out our sugar cookie dough and used our snowman
cookie cutter to cut out snowmen.

Then after our cookies baked and cooled, we decorated.

We pretended our sprinkles were snow
and gave our snowman blueberry eyes.

Then we went in for the bite.

Delicious!
Happy First Day of Winter!

Peanut Butter Play Dough Stars

In the evenings we settle down as a little family and spend time together reading about the arrival of our Savior. We have enjoyed our time of advent and it has really helped us stay focused on the true meaning of the Christmas season. Because the advent study (that we are tweaking quite a bit) does not have a lesson each day, we have been incorporating other books into our family time. During the day though Seth and I have been trying to do some crafts and activities that are related to what we are talking about. For instance, one of our nights we focused on the star and the wise men. So the next day we used star cookie cutters and peanut butter play dough to make some stars. We had a lot of fun and it was some tasty play dough too!
(Next year I think I might try to have a corresponding craft or activity each day and I love the idea of using matchboxes as a Christmas Countdown.)

Peanut Butter Play Dough

- 1 cup peanut butter
- 1/2 cup honey
- 2 cups powdered sugar

Mix together and play!

Playing in the Snow

It's not officially winter yet, but it sure feels like it at our house. Sunday evening we got our first "big" snow of the season. By "big" I mean between 2-3 inches. Because we have all been battling runny noses and congestion we decided to hold off playing in the snow until this morning. We stayed out about 10 minutes and probably would have stayed longer if we could have built a snowman, but it just wasn't happening with the type of snow that we got. We might go out later with some shovels and toys once Bryan gets home so that he can join in on the fun.
As for this morning, Seth just stood still for a few minutes observing the white landscape.

Then he decided he needed to taste the snow after our attempt at making a snowman.

With mittens on, it was hard to pick up snow and throw, but Seth gave it his best shot.

Then the smiles just kept coming...

until we decided to go warm up inside.

Holiday Extravaganza 2010

For the last few weeks I have been crafting away all in anticipation for the big Holiday Extravaganza at Hiseville Elementary School. In addition to some of the other crafty things that I made before Thanksgiving, this week I made:

tissue covers from leftover fabric scraps that I had, peppermint topiaries,

an adorable owl pendant necklace,

a red rosette wreath,

and a dried oranges wreath.

The big sale was yesterday evening. My friend Carmella and I were so excited. We had put a lot of time, effort, and money into our first craft fair endeavor. We arrived plenty early and set up our cute table. We didn't have the greatest spot in the school's gym and it definitely wasn't a 12 x 12 space, but we made do with our situation and luckily our neighbors gave up a bit of space to help us have a little walkway to our colorful corner. Attendance for the event was not as great as I was hoping and so sales were a bit lacking. We did learn a few things though throughout the night. People like food and in that area people love the country looking stuff (I really should have known). Our neighbor had a whole bunch of primitive styled stuff and it sold like wildfire even with the limited number of people attending. There was a cupcake lady and she sold a ton of cupcakes. My cake pops were my bestseller. I actually made my first dollar selling a cake pop! The rest of the evening I sold 7 more cake pops, the owl necklace, one of the Christmas Tree in a Jar necklaces, and a sparkly red ring. My friend Carmella sold one hair bow out of all the mesh wreaths and hair bows that she had made. So we were a little bummed especially since we still had a ton of stuff left. But to look on the bright side, we had fun spending time together, we had fun crafting, and we had enough initiative to give the whole selling our own stuff at least one try. Looks like now everyone I know will be getting a flowerpot bubble gum machine, a wreath, or a crayon tote for Christmas and every other special occasion for the next little while. :)

A Lesson with Lights

Sometimes things don't turn out like I imagine they should. Sometimes I over expect. Sometimes I spend too much time pumping myself up for something and end up disappointed in the end. In some cases it's a fault of mine, but then other times it's not. It happened to be a fault the other evening when we headed out to the "Historic Downtown Lights Up" event on the square. I have always wanted to go and for one reason or another in the five years that we have been living in BG, we haven't been able to attend. This year I knew we just had to go.
I had high hopes of watching the lights come on, seeing Seth's face light up, and sipping on hot cocoa while enjoying the evening with my sweet little family. But of course, I also wanted the whole event documented because I am totally obsessed with capturing it for all time. It's another fault of mine. I learned my lesson that night though.

We arrived about 15 minutes before the lighting ceremony was supposed to begin. We walked around aimlessly for a few minutes and finally decided we would sit on a bench near the fountain. It was cold, not unbearably cold, but cold. It was dark. We had a one year old that didn't want to sit still and didn't understand that he was going to be surrounded by lights in just a matter of minutes. When you combine all of those things with trying to take a good picture, it just doesn't work out too well. I had big dreams that I would be able to have some beautiful pictures of Seth surrounded by lights. But instead we ended up with a few crazy shots, a few mediocre ones, and three Tillery's that were ready to go five minutes after the lights were flipped on.Total FAKE Smile

It was not the evening I had anticipated and we left irritable (mostly because of me and my pouty attitude) and I left feeling completely disappointed. The problem was I was so focused on capturing the moment that I wasn't living in the moment. I have heard it many times by many people. Sometimes, you just have to put the camera down.
Because Bryan could sense my complete disappointment and the irritability from that night was just a faint memory, we went back to the Square to try to enjoy the lights a few days later. We headed out early so that any photo ops were more likely to turn out, but we focused on just enjoying our time together. While we were there snow flurries were falling which made our evening even more special. Seth got to run around. We saw lots of lights. We giggled and played. We were living in the moment...

and it just so happens that we were able to get a few cool shots, too.

Advent

In our effort to make Christmas more meaningful in our home, we started celebrating Advent this year. To be honest, I didn't know much about Advent until a few years ago. I knew it had to do with something about a wreath with some candles or a cute calendar or something like that. Turns out it's not really, those are just things people use to celebrate. Advent as we are celebrating it is just a time of waiting or preparing our hearts for the Lord. For the entire month leading up to Christmas we are celebrating Advent during our normal bedtime story/prayer time. We looked into a few sources for an Advent study and finally decided on this one (theologically sound, but pretty traditional and feels kind of official). It provides a little snippet of Biblical background, scriptures, a child's prayer and adult's prayer, and song for each night. The problem is we have a one year old. So we are modifying it greatly. We are trying to make it more kid friendly (like using a touchable nativity) and by the end of the season we will probably just have our own family study (and will hopefully post next year). The study we are using as a guide only has 4 studies a week though, so we just read from our Toddler's Bible and sing our own songs on other nights. We also don't know all the songs the study provides but we just sing something we do know instead. Seth is so cute trying to sing. I think that is his favorite part. We didn't really dig the whole wreath and different colored candles thing so we just use one flameless candle that we picked up at the Dollar Store. We thought that might help Seth differentiate that this time is special. We hope that it represents a sweet time with family that focuses on the gospel and God's greatest gift during the month of December.

Celebrating Christmas

Over the past few months Bryan and I have read a lot about family traditions and how many people celebrate holidays. When it comes to Christmas we veer way outside of how a lot of people think. Over the last couple of years Bryan and I have really tried to redo the way we celebrate Christmas. By redo, I mean that we have tried to not let the world dictate how we should be celebrating the birth of our Savior.
Two years ago we decided to match any gift that we gave friends and family by donating to Heifer International. We made a big deal about it and printed out those cute tags that they provide to show someone that you purchased say a flock of chickens in their name. We were trying hard to do something different, but I think we still wanted that feel good moment from something that we did. Last year we donated, but I am not sure anyone knew (at least until now).
Two years ago we tried to stop making a list of Christmas gifts and last year Bryan and I stopped giving gifts to each other. We always put too much emphasis on the gifts and the surprise leading up to the gift exchange, which always led to disappointment for us in the end. Now we don't have to even worry about it anymore and that feels good.
Since Seth was just barely three months old last year at this time we didn't really worry too much about what we would do for Christmas other than starting our Jesus' birthday celebration on Christmas Day. This year though we want to add more traditions, but not just any traditions. We want what we do with Seth to be meaningful. We always knew we didn't want to "do Santa." We don't want to make a big deal about gifts for ourselves. We don't have stockings that hang from the chimney with care. If you have been around for a while, you know I have struggled with decorating for Christmas for the last few years, but for now the decorations are staying although they have been toned down a lot. We are happy with the choices that we have made and are making, but we started worrying that we would be like "those people" who act like the Christian life is a big ol' list of don'ts. We realize that we are already the complete weirdos that don't do Santa plus a thousand other things (like Halloween, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, etc.). But we want to make it clear that even though there are a lot of things we don't do, there are plenty of things we do.
So we are making an effort to create traditions that are full of joy and celebration, but that don't include empty distractions. We want to be conscious and intentional about our gift giving. We want Christmas and every other celebration throughout the year to honor God. We don't have everything figured out, but hopefully we can share what worked for us and what didn't along the way.