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Through my various online homeschool buddies I heard about an ebook that came out called “Truth in Tinsel“. It’s a wonderful daily advent devotion for little kids that isn’t as over their head as some of the Jesse Tree books. You do a daily reading from the Bible with the children and a simple craft that goes along with it. Then there is a discussion section at the end. Nadia and I had some great conversations during this and she had some really sweet responses to the readings and questions that followed. Each craft is a small ornament to tell the story of advent – I bought little trees on clearance in January for when the girls do this together in 2012.

Nadia working on the scented dough to represent the frankincense and myrrh.

Here are our crafts (we missed the crafts on some days -but still did the readings with all our other activity in December, but we almost completed the full 24):

Light, Kingdom, Zechariah

Gabriel, Mary, Mary and Elizabeth with pregnant bellies

Song, Sun, Joseph, Joseph’s pillow (for his dream)

Bethlehem, Stable, Clothes, Sheep

Shepards, Temple, Star

Wise Men, Gifts

• For having 1st world problems. (What is that?)
• For things like our house flooding. When we had insurance and a place to stay while it was being fixed. And guess what? Through it all we had a HOUSE – with a yard and a garage with 2 working cars in it.
• For when the washer breaks. Sure it has to be fixed, but what must a washer seem like to someone in a 3rd world country? A magic box connected to your wall that fills with CLEAN water to wash your dirty clothes. You just dump in some soap that you can find at any store within 100 miles. Then you move it to another magic box that drys them for you so they can come out fresh and clean. So I am grateful that we have the money to fix our magic box when it breaks.
• on that note, For CLEAN water that pumps into my house without me giving it a 2nd thought. Our American toilet water is cleaner than what the bulk of the world walks miles everyday to collect.
• For when our A/C motor went out in the middle of the summer and we all spent a really hot night waiting for the repair man to come in the morning. Another magic item that we take for granted that keeps us comfortable day and night no matter what the weather. Once again grateful for the money we had to fix it.
• For having 3 toilets to clean.  How blessed are we to not ever have to think about where we go to the bathroom or what to do with it when we are done.

I could go on and on, but instead I ask you to post some of your 1st world problems you are thankful for today.

Click the photo above to see the whole album. (It has 60 photos)

We decided to try out Prairie Lights in Grand Prairie this year after talking to several people who go each year. During the week it’s $20 a car and I have to say that it’s an amazing display. Near the end they have a Santa’s Village set up with a few carnival type ride and LOTS of carnival food (we planned ahead and stopped at a drive through just before entering the park). They had a chance for kids to talk to Santa and if they wanted to they could have their photo. Amelie wanted no part of it, but Nadia really wanted to talk to Santa and for the first time ever said she would like a photo. It turned out adorable!!!

In Santa’s Village they also had a laser light show (not worth it) and a walk through forest (totally worth it). The girls enjoyed being out of the car and telling us all about the cool lights.

Nadia loves the Nativity scenes.

I thought this was cute since “The Year of the Dragon” is coming.

After the walk through forest we went back out to ride something called “Bear Affair” it was a tea cup sort of ride where you were mostly enclosed in a giant bears belly. Mike got it going so fast that I couldn’t stop laughing. The girls loved it and Nadia tried to turn the wheel to make it go faster. The girls rode the Carousel 3 times and we shared a caramel apple. You can go on the carousel and Bear Affair as many times as you want in the price of your car admission.

It was a very fun night out and we plan on going back each year.