Happy Advent!!

Well, the AAA Christmas season has officially begun with this first week in Advent. In honor of Advent, I've changed my background color to purple.

Yesterday after church, we spent time getting out some of our decorations. We decorated our mantle,


I'm still looking for a purple candle for the center. On Christmas Day we'll put red, green, and white candles up. The ceramic figures on the mantle are very special to me as my grandmother made them when I was a child. The date on the snowman is 1977!

We also put up our Advent calendar and our Advent wreath,























And put up a festive scene for my kitchen window (though it needs a bit more work, I think, it's still nice to look at!)


Finally, the most important part of our day - we put up our manger.


Notice in our manger that only the Shepherd and sheep are there, and they're not in the manger, just close by. Joseph, Mary, and the Donkey are travelling to Bethlehem - every day one of the boys will get to decide where to move them. On Christmas Eve, they'll arrive at the manger. After we get back from Midnight mass, the angel and baby Jesus will be there, and the sheep and shepherd will be close by, adoring the Infant Lord. At that point, the 3 Wise Men will start travelling to the manger, and they'll arrive on Epiphany, of course. I love using the manger scene to physically demonstrate the Christmas story, it makes us so meaningful to the children (and to me, too!)

There have been so many wonderful posts in my little corner of the blogosphere lately. Check out this humor post at Among Women (I am so glad I'm not the only one with these feelings!), this post of family Advent Devotions at A Gypsy Caravan, and the post up at Every Waking Hour, that has great ideas and links for those of us who have tumultuous life circumstances, or find ourselves getting drained and discouraged by the holidays. And this poignent post up at Real Learning is not to be missed. What if this was our last Christmas? How would we want to celebrate? What would we want our children to remember?