7QT-Advent Edition

I'm participating in my first 7 Quick Takes Friday newly hosted by Kelly from This Ain't The Lyceum!  It's a fun way to recap the week and talk about some fun and random thoughts and activities!   

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St Andrew's Feast Day

We celebrated St Andrew's feast day on Sunday November 30th and had a blast learning more about St Andrew and beginning Advent!  We made the adorable St Andrew craft from CatholicIcing.com, said our prayer for the Advent wreath, started the St Andrew's novena, had a yummy fish dinner and open our first of our Advent storybooks!

Opening our Advent books (and yes it was Packer's Sunday as well!)

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Advent Homeschooling

We are taking a nice break from our regular homeschool lessons with Seton to relax this Advent!  We went to the library and got a huge stash of books, turned on the fire, snuggled up on the couch and wasted almost 2 hours in holy leisure reading with the kids (I think that's a record for the longest time we ever sat and all read together)!  That's what I call enjoyment!

 

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Instagram Fun

Having just joined the blogging world, I decided to also dive into Instagram as "ChildrenoftheChurch!  I am starting by participating in CatholicSistas Advent Photo Challenge!  It has been so much fun! 



 

 

 

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Time flying by - Preserving Memories

 

I don't know about you, but sometimes doing crafts with little ones is EXHAUSTING!  I have tried making it easier on myself by really organizing our homeschool room and all of our craft activities, but it still takes some major energy on my part sometimes!  This canvas is something we made last Christmas which was one of those exhausting crafts but now I am SO glad that we did it as I was so excited when I pulled it out of our Advent/Christmas boxes!  Our baby was only 6 months old and preserving those sweet baby hands and feet are so precious!  I know it will be a treasured piece in our home for years to come!





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Advent Reflections - A Date Night

 

We just moved back to our hometown after my husband finished his one year medical fellowship this past July.  After 4 crazy years of medical school, 3 years of residency and 1 year of fellowship we are really trying to set our marriage as a priority and really set aside specific time for it!  We have been trying to go out on more dates, we took a trip away from the kids (which we hadn't done in YEARS) and we when we can't get out we try to have date nights at home!  This past week we went on a fantastic date night listening to a talk about Advent from one of our favorite Jesuits, Father Larry Gillick, from our alma mater Creighton University.  Stay tuned for a post ALL about his amazing talk!

The Beautiful Advent wreath at our church!





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A Christmas Concert

Our middle son Connor is taking the Littler Explorer's class at the Omaha Homeschool Learning Center.  The learning center is great resource here in our community for homeschool families where we can take our children one day a week for extra activities and classes.  It has been wonderful for our family as our oldest son is taking Tae-kwon-do and our middle son is taking a Little Explorer's class which is basically just basic preschool story and play time!  It has been great to help him socialize and interact better with others his own age! 

Last night they had their open house and Connor's class sang "Away in a Manger" and "We Wish you a Merry Christmas".  He has been practicing every day for weeks and was so excited.  He is the clown and dramatic one of our family so this was right up his alley!  He was simply adorable and I was a proud, proud momma!

Seriously, he is the cutest kid!

Singing "We Wish you a Merry Christmas"

"Away in a Manger"

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Getting ready for St Nicholas's Feast Day

We are having so much fun learning about Advent and St Nicholas this week!  We have been doing different activities all week learning about St Nicholas, reading our books, we wrote our letters that we leave out to Jesus on the eve of St Nicholas's feast day, and have been watching the St Nicholas movie with Veggie Tales and CCC's Nicholas: The Boy Who Became Santa!  Our boys are so excited to put their shoes out tonight and to go to their St Nicholas party tomorrow with our homeschool co-op!

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