Happy Advent! and Our New Nativity Advent Calendar

Today is the first day of Advent, which includes the four Sundays before Christmas. It's a time of preparation for remembering Christ's birthday. I've always associated it as a rather festive period, but after a little Internet reading I see that in past centuries it wasn't all that way.

We have an Advent wreath with four candles on the dining room table. The first week we light one candle each night, the second week, two, and so on. Desert Boy loves that we get to play with candles and fire.

We also brought out some Christmas decorations yesterday at Desert Boy's request, and the house is looking a little bit brighter, with our one-foot Christmas tree up, fake Poinsettias, and other assorted decorations. We'll keep bringing them out over the next weeks so we have new things to look at. One other thing we got out were Advent calendars, where we open one door a day to see a Bible verse and a secret picture.

I just haven't been happy with those little cardboard Advent calendars, so I was trying to figure out something more interactive. I saw that they had cool felt and magnetic Advent calendars online, but they were a little pricey. I found a neat design for making your own felt Advent calendar, but that looked like a little too much work (and I'm not particularly crafty). Finally, I came up with a rather easy idea for our own nativity Advent calendar.

The first step was to go through old Christmas cards. (Yes, I've saved them since we've been married. Do other people save their Christmas cards? I know some must. I just don't want to think of myself as a hoarder.) I found the ones that had Nativity scenes or things that could be put into a Nativity scene (like birds and dogs and cats). Desert Boy had the job of cutting them up.

We also had to clean off part of the refrigerator. It was nice to have a white slate.

I decided that I would put up a little stable on the refrigerator and then have pouches below with numbers and each day we would add something to the scene.

All I had was white posterboard, but we did find a variety of construction paper so we could make it colorful. Desert Girl was most helpful (okay, not really.) She wanted to be a part of it all.

Here's probably the most technical part of the project. I got a ruler and marked out squares 2.5 x 3 inches. Why that size? It just looked right. Fortunately that turned out to be a size that would fit well on the posterboard. Then I gathered up a big stack of construction paper and cut it out.

I drew a number in pencil on each piece of paper and Desert Boy traced it in permanent marker. It was good number practice.

Then it was time to attach the number pouches to the posterboard. The kids weren't really much help for this part. There is definitely a limit to one- and four-year olds can do. I also found out that even if the cap of a gluestick has been left off, if you cut the gluestick in half, there is some sticky part left. I stapled the numbers at the edges of the posterboard for a little extra reinforcement.

Then it was time to tape the posterboard to the refrigerator. (I still need to buy some magnetic tape. It's just that I didn't feel like driving 100+ miles round trip to the nearest store that might or might not have it.)

Desert Girl helped put the different cutouts in the pockets. She made some of the animal noises as she did so. We will have a lot of animals in our stable this year!

And here's the finished product! It will be fun to see how it goes.

And if we can keep Desert Girl, aka Emzilla, from destroying it.

Happy Advent! Do you have any Advent traditions?

The Fishing Hole

Last weekend we had a couple hours free and decided to go to our secret fishing hole.

Top secret.

So secret that if I told you.....well, you know the rest!

It was a good spot.

Here's a rainbow he caught. Not too big, but if we had kept everything, we would have had a nice little meal. Desert Boy wants to do that, have a little fish fry picnic. I do, too, as long as I don't have to cook!

My husband takes the hook out of the fish.

And promptly lands another one, the second of two rainbow. Earlier he caught a big brown.

Desert Boy was a little squeamish around the fish, but we made him touch it anyway.

Maybe it was his dad telling him he would teach him out to eat fish eyeballs.

Ew.

Here you can see Desert Boy's expression a little better.

I used to think fishing was extremely boring and wasn't at all interested in it.

Now I still agree that it's usually boring, but I find that I don't mind some down time. I really don't have to be running evey minute.

Desert Girl was along for the adventure, but she mainly just sat and ate dirt.

It was a good way to spend a couple hours.

Hope you can find your own top secret fishing hole!

Fourth of July

I'm only a couple weeks behind on posting for the Fourth of July! Our day started bright and early with a 5k run. It's been years since I ran a 5k, and although back in March and April I was getting in some regular one and two mile runs, recently I had done virtually no running. Too many early morning bird surveys and knee and hip problems (I know, I sound like an old lady!). So I set a very generous time for myself to beat, one that I would have to keep jogging most of the time to make, but not too fast so that I would be in pain for the next few days.

Fortunately I was able to jog the whole way, and the route was one I had taken Emma on a couple times while Desert Boy was in preschool, so I was distracted by looking at flowers I had previously photographed (or what was left of them). At the end, Desert Boy was eager to join me.

He'll be a good racer someday!
Here's the finish line.
Desert Boy ate some of the snacks with his cousins Ruby and Grace. I tried to catch up to them the entire race, but they stayed ahead of me, making the run look so easy. Fortunately I beat my time, and even though I was ten minutes slower than when I ran in college, I was still happy. Maybe some day I will attempt those faster times again--or maybe not!
After some rest and recuperation and lunch, it was time to relax in one of our favorite activities--playing in water! Desert Boy and Lola carried innertubes over to the nearby swimming hole.

This is a settling pond for irrigation and was dug out to about eight feet deep early in the summer. High water brought lots of rock, sand, and silt down, and now one-third of the pond is less than a foot deep and the rest is only about three to four feet deep.

The water is from the mountains, so it's a bit chilly, but a good way to cool off on a hot summer afternoon! Thanks to my brother Ed for taking these photos. After all the excitement of our Grand Canyon trip, I hardly took any photos on the fourth.

I slipped away from the pond for awhile to go to a baby shower.

Cynthia should be having her baby any day! And in the background is Chayo, with her new baby. Little Emma is going to have lots of playmates.
And then it was time to go for the Fourth of July fun. We ate yummy food and then settled on the grass for the musical program. Emma had fun playing in the grass.
She even liked the fireworks, although I kept my hands over her ears to muffle the loudness. We got to watch from just across the field from where they were setting them off.
A lovely end to a relaxing day, just what we needed before our big adventure the next day.

Multitasking

Holding two kids, reading a book, and watching TV at the same time!

Almost 90 and Going Strong

Here's my Grandma, who I got to visit this last weekend. She's my hero. She's traveled around the world (and flipping through her photo albums when I was a kid gave me the travel bug!). She always looks on the bright side of life (why not?). She is certainly an example that in giving you receive--she is still active in the church choir, committees, helping with elections, and more. I sure hope I can age as gracefully as she has! Thanks, Grandma, for being such an inspiration!