The Letter W

Willkommen Weihnachtzeit!!

For the letter W we welcomed Christmas. We did all things Christmasy.  We put up our tree and our decorations (there aren't very many), we listened to Christmas music, and we made a Christmas craft. We also started learning our new Christmas songs for this year. We are learning Christnacht (Stars were Gleaming) and Seht den Stall (Once Within A Lowly Stable).  I am tempted to teach them Es ist ein Ros entsprungen but I'm not sure they will appreciate it the way I do. Maybe when they are a little older. That's ok. There are plenty of other Christmas songs to learn, besides practicing again the songs we learned last year. I feel like we did more than that, but that's all I remember at the moment. Maybe it just seems like we did more because it takes a long time to do those things.

Welcome Christmas!!! I'm so excited.

I really love our tree. I "inherited" it from my Grandparents. The ornaments are mostly all related to the star and the angels (there are a couple of shepherds, wise men, and a Mary and Joseph too I think), but now there are some other things up there too, like the ornaments I bought in Norway 10 years ago, some made out of olive wood that my Grnadparents got while in Jerusalem, a couple of ornaments that remind me of my Grandparents (a cowboy snowman and a golfer snowwoman) and a few other random things - you know, like a pickle. At the top of our tree we have a little baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a hay wreath with a little star hanging over him. I told me kids we put that one on the very top and very last because that is the most important thing about Christmas. It is ALL about the Savior. (You know, NOT all about the presents.)

 These are Christmas bells, cut out of cardboard, wrapped in aluminum foil, sprinkled with glitter, a ribbon hot glued to the top, and the jingle bell at the bottom just has a pipe cleaner or a ribbon or something strung through it and then the pipe cleaner is taped on the back of the bell, so the bell "chimes" whenever you move it. It was a fun and easy craft. (Abigail has already ripped her bow off three times.)