You may or may not know but I spend ALOT of time on the internet looking up what others are doing with their kids. I get so many great ideas BUT I can often get overwhelmed with everything and spend all my time "looking" and never "doing" any of the great ideas I see. That almost happened with The Advent Season. Between FRG (family readiness group) stuff, MOPS stuff, and just stuff in general I almost blew off the Advent Season. I justified it by saying that Virginia is too young to understand and I'm too wiped out from Chris being gone to handle doing anything. But God heard my despair and he answered. Now what we are doing isn't anything HUGE or GRAND or elaborate or well thought out but several things fell into place and I'm just glad that whether she remembers this advent season or not I will know that we did something.
The Beginning. So one of my church friends invited Virginia and I to come and stuff goody bags for a program they were going to have at the church. We gladly went because it gave Virginia a chance to play with her friends while I chatted with my friends and we got the bags stuffed at the same time. I really didn't want to go to the program because well managing a 2 year old on your own at a large function involving them having to sit still, color, glue, and pay attention isn't very relaxing for me. The women in the group persisted and finally I decided that it wasn't about me and that I needed to suck it up and do this for Virginia. So we went.
The Program. It was called Breakfast in Bethlehem. So many people signed up that they had to open another session from 11:30-1pm and renamed that one Brunch in Bethlehem! It was a great idea, a great program, and one that I think everyone totally enjoyed and gave families an opportunity to have their older kids show off their talents and involve the younger kids in the story and reason for the season. So the program consisted of breakfast (pancakes and sausage), crafts to do at your table, a condensed version of the Christmas story with participation from the audience with their crafts, singing, and fellowship. We got there and one of the men in the church had brought in his super fancy super nice train set along with a roller coaster, ice skating rink, car area, ect...Virginia immediately zoned in on that train and stood at that table. It worked out great. At MOPs one of the mothers at my table is totally blind. Her husband is blind and her son is also blind. They are an amazing family. So I saw them come in so I asked them to sit with us. Virginia stayed at the train table while I went with my friend to help them get their plates. I finally convinced Virginia that if she came and ate that she could go back to the train table. She ate both her pancakes, 2 pieces of sausage, and 1 of my pieces of sausage. So after eating we were supposed to start on our crafts. One was to glue cotton balls to a sheeps face then glue the face to a paper bag to make a puppet. I was so proud of Virginia as she grabbed the glue and started to work. So they started the program and when the shepherds were out with their sheep the kids were supposed to hold up their sheep and baa baa baa. Virginia did it whole heartedly and continued to baa baa baa during the rest of the program. Yes at one point it was quiet and she was still baaing baa baa baaing. They had a halo in the bag for the kids to put on. A crown. and a flashlight to lead the shepherds to the baby jesus. We sang one verse of 3 hymns throughout the story. The kids choir put on the program part of it and did a great job.
Another advent thing on the table that we could have put together there but I decided to use a different way was a paper chain of the Christmas Story (the actual scripture). They had the story typed up on paper for each day of December and already cut for us. I'll explain how I'm using this tomorrow. It's late and I've written too much already. Because I was helping my friends at the table and wrangling Virginia I didn't get but 3 pictures.
