Advent and Christmas

It has been a while since I wrote about our school. I could try to recap what we have been up to but it will take to long. I so wish I could get on a good writing schedule! There are so many questions, ideas, comments, reflections, flying around in my head. I wish I could get them out. But the truth is that at this time in my life, I can't sit down and write. It takes too much time and effort. Maybe some day...

For now, I would limit myself to jotting down what we have been doing so I can have a record. Our advent has been good, I think.

- We decorated our mantel and our tree for advent on time.
- Prayer time in the morning has consisted on meditations on an Advent book for children by Julie Walters. After the prayers and meditations are finished, we have been reading some Christmas stories from a book I picked up at Half Price Books last year: A Newberry Christmas. It is a compilation of Christmas stories by some Newberry award winners. Some are better that others but overall they have been enjoyable.
- We observed the Immaculate Conception feast day by going to mass and attending the mission at our church.
- We celebrated St. Juan Diego's feast day with churros and watching the video from CCC.
- We celebrated Our Lady of Guadalupe's feast day by reading the story of the apparition and watching some videos on Youtube about the mysteries surrounding the tilma. Then we went to a party to a friend of ours (not related to the feast day at all)
- We have made plastic shrink ornaments ( I actually got those last year for Paidea Classics- an Easter Orthodox site). These were fun to make.

As Christmas approaches, the challenge is to keep the spirit alive. It is a lot easier to do these things within the context of our school. Once school is out, the kids want a break too. It is rather hard to keep a sensible routine going especially when my mind keeps going to all the things I still have to do. This year it will be especially hard because we are not going to be home for Christmas. It will be heard to keep our family prayer time going as well as the reading of stories. Thankfully for us Catholics, Christmas does not end on December 25th. So we will still have the chance to do some more reading and listening after we come back.