Christmas In Our Home

The first few days of Christmas were filled with lots of celebration and food. Being pregnant at this time of the year is always a challenge because good food tastes even better and I want to eat all of it. Now that things have settled down a bit I thought I would share a few Christmas things around our home.

Here is a picture of our completed Jesse Tree. I stopped posting the individual days a while back when things started getting really crazy - sorry :S. We are really happy with how the Jesse Tree helped our family prepare for Christmas. We will definitely use it again next year.

We found our Christmas tree the weekend before Christmas. It's a lovely quirky little tree. We decorated it on December 23rd. It's lack of branches really show off it's beautiful ornaments!

Weekly Menu

December 26-January 1, 2010!

Last week was busy for our family and we weren't always home for dinner. So... you may notice that a few of our dinners this week are the same as last week :)

Saturday: Chicken pot pie and salad.
Sunday: Feast of the Holy Family - Dinner with extended family.
Monday: Feast of Holy Innocents - Teriyaki chicken legs, sesame rice and peas.
Tuesday: Roasted yam soup and homemade bread.
Wednesday: Penne with a tomato cream sauce served with steamed broccoli.
Thursday: New Year's Eve - Pealla
Friday: New Year's Day - Lasagna and lettuce.

Merry Christmas!

May you have a wonderful Christmas!

Christ Candle

Today Angel and my niece decorated our Christmas Christ candle. Monkey wasn't interested in helping out, so he played with decks of cards from Memere's coffee table instead.

Weekly Menu

Our Menu for December 19-25th:

Saturday: Tuna casserole and sliced veggies.
Sunday: Greek chicken pita wraps served with tzatziki.
Monday: Teriyaki chicken legs, sesame rice and peas.
Tuesday: Indian beef curry, brown basmati rice and seasonal vegetable.
Wednesday: Roasted yam soup with homemade bread.
Thursday: Christmas Eve: Reveillon Dinner with extended family.
Friday: Christmas Day Dinner with extended family, we're bringing stuffing, cranberry sauce and cookies!

Lunch ideas: Tuna melts, mini pita pizzas, sandwiches.

Send the Pope a Christmas E-card

Did you know that you can send the Pope a Christmas e-card? Yep, you sure can, check out Pope to You. I found out about this website through Zenit news: Send the Pope a Virtual Christmas Card. At first I wasn't sure it was for real, and then I thought it was a fun idea and that I should even send our parish priest a Christmas e-card :)

ps. When I first went on the webpage using Google Chrome the website didn't work properly; however, it seems to work fine with Mozilla Firefox.

Felt Christmas Ball

Here is my first felt Christmas tree ball. I found this tutorial at Zakka Life a little while ago. It wasn't difficult to make, but my circles weren't perfectly round so my ball has character :) I wouldn't use white felt again because it shows dust much more than coloured felts. It's a fun little project you should give it a try.

Knitted Scarf

I enjoy knitting because it relaxes me... unless I make a mistake of course. This Easy Mistake Stitch Scarf from The Purl Bee was so much fun and so easy to make it only took me a week to finish. I gave to my Mom for her birthday. The scarf is thick and soft, perfect for a cold winter day like today.

Jesse Tree - Day 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12

This morning I took a picture of our Jesse Tree. It's looking a lot fuller but we still have many more ornaments to add on. I'm really happy with the way it's coming together, but we are having some structural issues with the ribbons holding the ornaments - some are riping out. I'm still trying to figure out an easy way to fix them.

Our Jesse Tree.

Here is a brief summary of the last five days' ornaments and devotions (not including today):

Day 8: Moses and the Ten Commandments

We read about Moses from A Family Treasury of Bible Stories and then read the devotion from the Advent Jesse Tree book.

Exodus 32:15-18; 20:1-20

Day 9: Canaan, the Promise Land of Blessings

We read about the Promise Land from A Family Treasury of Bible Stories and then read the devotion from

the Advent Jesse Tree book.

Numbers 13-14:38; 24:17

Day 10: Ruth and Boaz

We read about Ruth and Boaz from our Bible and then read the devotion from the Advent Jesse Tree book.

Ruth 1-4

Day 11: King David

We read about the David in A Family Treasury of Bible Stories and then read the devotion from the Advent Jesse Tree book.

I Samuel 16:1, 13; 17:1-9, 40, 45-50

Day 12: Josiah Finds the Law

We read about Josiah in our Bible and then read the devotion from the Advent Jesse Tree book.

II Kings 23:1-3; Psalm 119:105

Weekly Menu

Here is our menu for December 12th - 18th:

Saturday: Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Chicken enchiladas, homemade refried beans, Mexican rice served with salsa and sour cream.
Sunday: Feast of St. Lucy
Dinner with extended family.
Monday: Vegetable deep dish pizza and sliced veggies.
Tuesday: Lentil soup and homemade bread.
Wednesday: Sweet and sour meatballs, rice and baked squash.
Thursday: Sushi and wonton soup.
Friday: Dining out.

Naptime Nightmares

It's been over a week since we took away Monkey's soother. His nighttime sleeping has improved drastically; he no longer wakes up because he's lost his soother. On the downside, he stopped napping during the day! I know he still needs a nap because he yawns and whines and trips over his own feet, but he won't nap. Instead he'll sit in his crib for two hours chatting, bouncing, and disrobing (even taking his diaper off) but not sleeping. He's so cranky and tired the rest of the day I can barely tolerate him and he usually wants to go to sleep right after dinner. Last night I was so frustrated and tired that we tried to keep him up late to see if that would help, but so far no luck. Today when I put him down he started kicking his crib apart so I took everything out of his room and put the mattress on the floor and closed him into his room.

I don't know what to do anymore, any tips or ideas would be appreciated :)

Knitted Dishcloth

I've been making a few of these knitted dishcloths for Christmas gifts.

I used Bernat Handicrafter Cotton to make these. They are very simple and quick to make. Here is the pattern from Bernat:

Cast on 4 stiches
Row 1: K. across
Row 2: K 2, yarn over (yo), K to end of row
Repeat Row 2 until there are 43 stitches on the needle.
Next Dec. Rows: K 1, K 2 together (tog), yo, K 2 tog, K to end.
continue working dec. row until 4 st remain.
Cast off remaining sts.

Christmas Cookies

Today I made and froze our first batch of Christmas cookies: Grandma's Gingersnaps. I'm hoping to do a lot of my Christmas cookie baking while my husband and Angel aren't home to prevent any temptations to "test" cookies to "make sure they're good". These are the cookies I'm planning to bake and freeze in the next couple weeks:

Grandma's Gingersnap
Lemon Poppy Seed Cookies
Chocolate Crackles
Cashew Caramel Cookies
Cherry Pecan Icebox Cookies
Sugar cookies
Florentines

Yum yum!

Jesse Tree - Day 4, 5, 6 & 7

The only things Monkey likes about the Jesse Tree is the part where we hang up the ornament. We do our Jesse Tree in the evening as a family so Monkey is usually tired and has a nonexistent attention span. At first we tried to get him involved but not anymore. Instead we spend this time with Angel, our Korean student, teaching her about the Bible and the meaning of Advent and Christmas. Here are our ornaments and readings for the last four days:

Day 4: The Call to Abram

We read from A Family Treasury of Bible Stories and then from our Jesse Tree devotion book.

Genesis 12: 1-7

Day 5: Isaac and the Lamb

We read from A Family Treasury of Bible Stories and then from our Jesse Tree devotion book.

Genesis 22: 1-13

Day 6: Jacob's Ladder

We read from A Family Treasury of Bible Stories and then from our Jesse Tree devotion book.

Genesis 28: 10-17

Day 7: Joseph's Coat of Many Colours

Tonight we will read Usborne's Joseph and His Amazing Coat and reflect on the story with our Advent Jesse Tree devotion book.

Genesis 37:3-36, 50:18-21

Feast of St. Nicholas

Today is the feast day of St. Nicholas. Who is St. Nicholas? Check out the St. Nicholas Center if you want to know more about this much loved saint. St. Nicholas is so much better than our modern day Santa Claus. From what we know St. Nicholas was a very generous and compassionate man who loved Jesus, so today we are taking time to celebrate his life.

Picture from www.stnicholascenter.org

Artist: Elisabeth Jvanovsky

I was very excited about preparing for today. Yesterday, I picked up Veggie Tales: St. Nicholas: The Story of Joyful Giving from our local library and printed some St. Nicholas colouring pages from Paper Dali. Also, last night my husband and I set up our stockings and filled them with chocolate gold coins and baked some candy cane cookies!

This morning we started our day with a nice breakfast and then went to church. For lunch we ate all sorts of delicious foods: sausage, fried eggs, homemade walnut, flax and date bread, homemade apple jelly and pickles - yum!

Our Korean student and her friend coloured the picture of St. Nicholas and then we went outside to enjoy the fresh fluffy snow.

When we got back, all cold and wet, we sat down to enjoy a cup of hot chocolate and candy cane cookies while my husband read this story about St. Nicholas. Then we opened our stockings and - surprise! - more chocolate!

We never had the time to watch the Veggie Tales movie because we had three surprise visitors throughout the day. One of which was a group of carolers from our local church youth group. How fun!

Weekly Menu

Our menu for December  5 - 11:

Saturday: Chicken pot pie and sliced veggies.
Sunday: Feast of St. Nicholas
breakfast - Date, walnut and flaxseed bread, fried eggs, pork sausage and sliced fruit.
special snack - Peppermint hot chocolate and candy cane cookies.
dinner - Potato pancakes (latkes) served with sour cream and applesauce.
Monday: Beef Stroganoff and steamed broccoli.
Tuesday: Feast of the Immaculate Conception 
Church potluck - Ham Beer beef stew.
Wednesday: Curried split pea soup and homemade biscuits.
Thursday: Three cheese risotto, roasted squash and Waldorf salad.
Friday: Corn and black bean quesadillas served with salsa and sour cream and sweet potato wedges.

Jesse Tree - Day 1, 2 & 3

We are now on Day 3 of our Jesse Tree reflections! The first night was hilarious (and frustrating) so we changed a few things and modified our expectations. Things are going a lot smoother now.

We use a variety of books during our reflection time. Our main books are the Bible and The Advent Jesse Tree: Devotions for Children and Adults to prepare for the coming of the Christ child at Christmas by Dean Lambert. We are also using a variety of picture books from our collection or the library. Here is what we've done so far:

Day 1: The Light in Creation 

We read about the creation account from A Family Treasury of Bible Stories and then did the devotion from The Advent Jesse Tree (see above).

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
Genesis 1:1

Day 2: The First Sin

We read Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden by Jane Ray, a beautiful picture book, and then read the devotion from The Advent Jesse Tree book.

A fruit with a snake wrapped around it.
Genesis 3: 1-10

Day 3: Inside the Ark

Tonight we'll read from Noah's Ark by Lucy Cousins and Noah's Ark by Jerry Pinkney and the read then devotion from our Advent reflection book.

An Ark.
Genesis 6: 5-8, 7:27-23, 9:16

Soother Weaning - Update

We are now on Day 3 of soother weaning and things are going well. Monkey hasn't had his sus-sus since Sunday night and today is the first day that he hasn't asked for it while in the car or at nap time (yay!). Surprisingly he doesn't seem to miss it as much as we anticipated. Maybe I'm missing it more than him :) It's so strange to think that he's had a soother for almost 2 years and all of a sudden it's gone.

Monkey taking a bath with his soother (5 months).

Advent with Monkey

Advent has begun and our Jesse Tree and Advent wreath are set up. I spent time organizing and preparing for Advent this year but I kept on getting this nagging feeling that Monkey was being left out in some way. So I gave it a bit of thought and came up with a few ideas. Monkey is a busy little guy but isn't too interested in talking. So I thought of incorporating themes from our Jesse Tree into our day to build up his vocabulary.

For week 1 of our Jesse Tree we will focus on the stories of Noah's Ark and Joseph and his colourful coat. From those stories we'll use books and activities to explore words about animals, colours and boats.

Some books that we'll use this week:

One More River: A Noah's Ark Counting Song  Paley, Joan
Noah's Ark Cousins, Lucy
Noah's Ark Pinkney, Jerry
Usborne Bible Tales Joseph and His Amazing Coat Amery, Heather
Canada in Colours Gurth, Per-Henrik
Junior's Colors Visher, Phil

And here are the activities we'll try out:

- Sensory bottles - from here
- Iceboat Craft
- Finger Painting
- Visit to animal farm
- Handmade coloured felt puppets

I'm curious to see if Monkey's vocabulary will develop over the next week. Even if it doesn't I'm sure he'll have fun and get into lots of trouble :)