Advent 2014: The Preparations Begin

Advent is here!  The day after Thanksgiving I felt like Advent had snuck up on me, but Saturday night we decorated the mantle for Advent and brought out the nativity set for the kids to play with (we ended up with two because last year I couldn't find ours anywhere until after Advent had started and I'd gone out and bought another one, having given ours up for lost).

I wasn't sure if I was up for doing much with the kids this year, but I was motivated by the past few years and the fact that I really want to create Advent traditions that last year after year that our kids remember and so I dragged myself through the evening setup on the 29th and when I was done felt energized and accomplished.

And thankfully since we have been working on making Advent traditions for a few years our plans sort of fell into place because I already had a fairly good idea of what we wanted to do and what we didn't want to do.

The first thing that I knew I wanted to find were the candles that I'd purchased last year and our Advent "wreath."  It's not an actual wreath but it is one of my favorite Advent decorations, and we use it as our wreath:

And after Advent the candles will be changed out for Christmas:

Each night we'll say our family prayers and light the candle for the night before bedtime.

Next on the list was finding the box labeled "December Toys."  Thankfully that was easy for Paul to find and we'd planned on doing a major purge of broken toys and toys that aren't being used anymore that are being snuck out of the house for other kids to enjoy (Sadie was surprisingly on board with the idea, likely because she helps clean up the toys every night and the idea of less toys to pick up sounded pretty fantastic to her).

Then we brought out the toys from the December box and set up the play nativity with all of its pieces in the center of the toy room and then we set up the other nativity on the mantle as part of the Advent Christmas display.  That nativity only has animals in it and is placed on the right side of the Advent Wreath.  On the opposite side of the mantlr are a tiny Mary and Joseph who will slowly be making their way towards the nativity:

This year we're also doing Wise Men Adventures again.  That means that these guys...

...will be hidden somewhere that the kids can find them each morning until Epiphany when the Wise Men arrive at the stable and that these guys...

....will continue the search until arriving on Christmas morning when the kids come downstairs.

Sadie and I are also watching the daily videos from Holy Heroes (I highly recommend it!  We did it last year and it was wonderful!).  We'll be incorporating the Holy Heroes lessons into our school day and then continuing them through Advent once we go on break for the holidays.

Sadie also reminded me that she wants to use The Jesse Box, as part of our Advent preparations, which I must admit in all the rush I'd nearly forgotten about:

The last thing we'll be doing this year is our Jesse Tree.  Last year I finished all the ornaments but didn't get the tree sewn together the way I'd planned, so each day we looked at an ornament and talked about it, but it was never completely finished because the ice storm left me stranded without a sewing machine in the four days before Christmas (and then in the days after too!).

So hopefully this year nothing will keep me from sewing all the ornaments into a tree to hang on the wall!

Here are some of the ornaments.  Thankfully they're all together.  I plan on making them into a giant tree wall hanging.

Sadie and I are also going to be making little hand drawn ornaments apart from the giant ornaments we'll talk about each night.

And that is how our Advent traditions are adding up this year! What are you planning for Advent this year?  Are there any new traditions you're adding to the mix?

And for more Advent reading check out:
Christina at a Catholic Reversal 
Sarah at Fumbling Towards Grace
and
Cecilia at Catholic Fit Mom for Life

Feel free to leave any Advent posts you've loved in the comments sections!  There are so many great posts with great ideas and I'd love to read yours!

The Insane Ramblings of Finals Week (Part 1)

I haven't written for a few days because I'm pretty sure that finals week (Part 2... Why can't it ever just be one week of finals in law school?!?!?!  Why is it always stretched out so close to Christmas?) is trying to kill me.  Paul leaves the house before 7 and gets home after 11 and when he is home, if he walks too close to a door Patrick starts sobbing because he doesn't want Daddy to leave again.  

Tomorrow at noon it will be over, unless a lovely holiday killing email arrives from a professor, offering an extension on the paper that is due tomorrow.  Extensions, which are seemingly acts of kindness, have been the bane of my existence these past few (six) years because they can stretch a paper on forever and ever as it gets closer and closer to perfect but is never actually done until ten seconds before the actual time when it's due (that is only a slight exaggeration... ten minutes would probably be more accurate) .  

As a result of the finals week stress and possible oxygen deprivation (more on that in a second), this post will likely be of the rambling sort that you all have come to expect now and then over here.  

First off, it's snowing here in Michigan.  

Coming from the mountains, where we not infrequently used a yard stick to measure snow, the half foot or so that we've gotten doesn't feel like all that much... until it's time to get in a car to go some where.  And that is when the difference between the mountains of Northern California and Michigan strike me the most.  Because in California it wasn't unusual to see plows out before a storm hit, waiting for the flurries to start.  

After five days of snow in Michigan a plow finally meandered down our street.  Of course after five days of cars packing down the snow it didn't actually do much... but plow spotting is almost like a sport in our house now and so it was exciting all the same.

Here is an example of a Michigan street during the storm.  It was taken while driving down the main street by the campus.  And look!  While you can see that there should be a road, because there's a crossing light, you just can't actually see where the road should be:

I am amazed at the drivers though, because I've seen plenty of sliding, spinning tires and no one seems to panic or crash, which is pretty impressive considering the general state of the roads.    

In 3 Kings news, the entire group of searchers was very, very excited at what they found in our icy little home on the 15th day of Advent:

You see, I've been embarrassed to tell you all what our heater has been set at.  I had the thermostat cranked up to 75 (but just wait until you hear what the actual temperature was) and I've done everything I could think of and we were still shivering.  I hung a thick thermal curtain across the stairs and have a fabric door stopper that slides open and closed with the door and still it was cold.

I'd been bundling the kids in double layers and they were cuddled up in quilts, but Patrick was still waking up crying three times a night because his little hands were cold.  I would fleece lined tights, stretch pants and flannel pajama pants and I'd still be shivering.

A normal person might think that something was wrong with the thermostat, but my first thought was that we were just being wimpy.  We'd gone soft after a year in Florida.  We just needed to toughen up.  After all it was 75 degrees!

I finally broke down and got a space heater.  I noticed, set on the economy setting, that it kept going on to heat the living room to 68.  Now the living room is by far the warmest room in the house (and the thermostat was still reading 75).  So I finally dug out the thermometer after the heater had been running for a day.  It was ridiculously hot now and I was wearing short sleeves.

The main thermostat seemed stuck at 75.  And do you know what my high tech meat thermometer said?  64. I even stuck it in room temperature water that had been sitting out all day to be sure.

So 64 was hot.  I have no idea what cold was but I imagine it was pretty low.  And means Patrick's room was at least 10 degrees colder because it's naturally the coldest room in the house (good in summer..).

After 1 night with the space heater in Patch's room he is sleeping through the night again.  And I cranked the main heater up to "78" which I guess probably means "65" in reality (with the space heater "78" meant 66 in the living room).

Now back to the search party:

Sadie set this up for the babies and made a spot for the kings to rest and I just couldn't say no, so Day 16 was designed by Sadie!

In other heat/winter related news, last year a sales person at the gas company convinced me to pay $180 to get a company insured CO2 monitor.  The insurance meant that if there was a false alarm or problem the cost would be covered by the gas company.  

The monitor has sat at 0 plugged into our outlet for almost a year now.  Today I came down and it was above 30.  I pressed "peak reading" and it said 59.  I wasn't sure what that meant so I called the gas company (it's back to 0 now) and they said they are sending someone out today to check out the house because the sudden change is worrying.

And that is the latest in our little snow bound house today.  Hopefully I'll have some CO2 related news soon!

Advent: the 13th and 14th days

The thirteenth day of Advent this year is the Feast of Saint Lucy, and while I had big plans in my head they didn't come to anything this year.  But I don't really think of that as a bad thing, since I like having ideas for things that I want to add in next year.  

Yesterday was a day of mini disasters.  I was in desperate need of getting to the store to do food shopping, but after bundling everyone up we discovered that the car battery was dead.  So Paul hopped on his bike and rode in the snow to Sears to buy a battery and then rode home with it on his bike and managed to cram his hands in the tiny space required to install it (while the babies waited impatiently after being bundled up to go outside!).

It was finally finished though, and everyone was bundled up again and the shopping was finally done and there is food in the kitchen again, which makes me very, very happy.

Now for our 3 Kings.  One the 12th the girls woke up to find them riding a lion around the play room:

While the shepherds enjoyed the princess castle:

Here's our Advent candle gradually burning down and showing our progress through this time of preparation:

And here's Boomer bundled in three layers and ready to go out into the cold!  He was having the toughest time waiting:

His sisters distracted him a bit:

And this morning, on the 14th day of Advent they came downstairs to find that the kings and shepherds had gotten in to some of Mae's therapy toys!

Now to get Sadie ready for ballet and more importantly, to survive the next four days until finals are over!

The 12th Day of Advent: Happy Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe!

Happy Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe!  

There's really no other month that can compete with December in terms of favorite feast days in our house.  October comes close, but I think December with it's mix of Advent and feast days (and of course Christmas!) easily carries the day!

Maggie was supposed to find this particular doll under the tree on Christmas morning, but I came across a necklace in a sensory collection (she loves necklaces!) that would be perfect for her and decided that could be her third present and that the doll would be the perfect surprise today.  

When the kids came downstairs this morning they found this:

Patrick was hilariously sweet this morning.

Now I have to begin by saying that Patrick isn't a huge fan of dolls.  I imagine it's the result of having a big sister that thinks he's a living doll who just lives to be cuddled, but if you try to hand the boy a doll he'll turn his face away and get the funniest little look and refuse to touch it.  Until he saw this doll:

Apparently this doll is different (one more reason to love Shining Light Dolls!  And Mae's Saint Nicholas doll kept her quiet for an entire Mass this past Sunday!).  He will pick it up and hand to me so that I can hold it up and say "Mary wants to kiss you!" and then he will present his cheek for a kiss.  We repeated this over and over again this morning and he had a sweet little smile on his face the entire time.

I also tracked down this book to read today:

I also snapped a picture of our Advent Candle to show that it's steadily burning down.  I've been pressing down the wax (thank you to the person who made that suggestion!) every day so that it burns evenly and I've finally got it burned to the correct date!  

We're halfway to Christmas Eve now!  I know I've said this before but I just feel like this Advent is flying by!

And for anyone who's interested Holy Helpers is giving away one of their CDs (normally over $14 before shipping and today it's free plus the cost of shipping!)  The CD their giving away includes the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe for the feast day!

The Search Continues: Shepherds, Wise Men and a Maggie Hiding Place

I couldn't find the shepherd.  I just couldn't.  I cleaned the whole downstairs like I do every night and searched for it for the last two nights and he was no where to be found.  And then I glanced over and there he was, right where the camel had been two nights before (note to self, check the monkey ball ramp 1st next time... because let's face it, it's highly likely that there will be a next time...) and I saw the shepherd and baby Jesus on the ramp.  

Maggie has apparently been quite busy:

Once everyone was back in their groups I began thinking up new places for our little guys to hide:

And I decided to surprise Mae by making her job of swiping members of the Shepherd Search Team and hiding them a tiny bit easier:

And that's the 11th day of Advent in our house!  Tomorrow we'll be halfway to Christmas Eve (although the day I'm secretly wishing for is December 18th, when Paul's last final will be turned in...)!

The Search Goes On (Days 9 and 10 from our Wise Men Adventures)

Yesterday was so busy with therapy, school, an hour and a half of taking notes at a board meeting (fun fact that I bet 99% of you didn't know I'm also the secretary for the board of directors of a corporation), and then the homework for today's meeting for the study that Mae and I are in, that I didn't post the pictures from the 9th Day of Advent.  Here's what our little guys got into:

Last night, as I set up for the tenth day, I came to the realization that the disappearance of random members of our search parties is not an accident.  First shepherd #2 disappeared.  Then a camel went AWOL (I found him stuck in a ball slide on a toddler toy).  Then shepherd #1 went missing.  And I was thinking it was all accidental until I found a missing camel last night under the rug in the play room, which conclusively proves that the person hiding the toys from me is about three feet tall and three years old.  I still have no idea where she put the two shepherds.  And so here are our pictures from the tenth day:

I can't believe we're only a couple of days away from the half way point in Advent!

The 8th Day of Advent and The Reason that I was Cheering Last Night

I've been busy as a bee sewing (which is a very, very good thing!) but last night I took a quick break to get our little search parties ready for the morning: 

And as I had the online game tracker on, showing the plays and the score of the Ohio/Michigan State game I couldn't help but throw in a little bit of green during my advent preparations:

We were pretty excited about the results and the fact that Michigan State should now be headed to the Rose Bowl where they will likely be playing Grumpa's team (Stanford, which both of his parents attended).  

And for some reason a question popped into my head that was tossed my way in the combox on a totally unrelated post about a year ago.  Someone asked why we were State fans when we'd just arrived here, likely because I kept posting enthusiastically (annoying?) pictures like this one:

Anyways, as the months have passed that question has popped into my head a few times and I've thought of writing a post answering the question, but I've held off because the reasons seem to keep piling up.  

This afternoon, following last night's victory, which put Michigan State at the top of the Big Ten this year, as I watch the kids play and snuggled under a Spartan blanket, I thought I'd attempt an answer.

Sadie picked out the theme for Daddy's birthday cake.

So here goes.  This is the answer to the question:  Why are you non-Michigan natives claiming to be State fans?

In the beginning I fell in love with Michigan State simply because Paul was accepted into the law school and he accepted the offer to come here.  I'd never been to Michigan when the letter caught up with us during Paul's summer internship in Calfornia, but it was already a place that I could actually imagine living.  You see one year in south western Florida, the land of perpetual summer, was more than enough for me.  I missed living in a world with seasons.  I missed the brilliant colors of autumn, the icy chill of winter, and most of all, I missed being able to walk outside in December at 7 am and not being instantly drenched in sweat.  

Besides, leaving Florida felt like leaving behind one of the most terrible times of our lives.  The months that followed losing Christian and the events at the hospital there had tainted our time down south in a way that wasn't really fair to Florida. Still, fair or not I was eager to leave Naples behind.

And so Michigan, with it's pictures of State glowing in a mantle of fall colors, looked a little bit like heaven to me.

The Museum

We hurriedly moved across the country (again) and Paul settled into school and enjoyed his classes.  

I was 24 weeks pregnant when we arrived and I quickly began looking for a doctor.  We'd had several scares during Patrick's pregnancy that had me on edge and I was eager to find an OB.  After calling three offices and being told they couldn't take me I was pointed towards the university's office.  They would accept me as a patient and could get me in right away.  

At that point I had no idea how grateful I would be to live so near the university in the coming year.  

I didn't know that at the start of the 9th month of my pregnancy with Patrick I would be admitted to the hospital with a fever of 103, a resting heart rate of 150 and blood pressure that kept dropping to 70 over 40, struggling to breath and terrified.

Most of the some 20 doctors from obstetrics and infectious disease that were bustling in and out of my hospital room in the following days were from the university and I was incredibly grateful for the care that Patrick and I received that led to a healthy delivery a few weeks later.  After all, I was more than a little distrustful of hospitals and doctors when I'd arrived, and my experience this time around did much to erase those fears.

Most of the doctors coming in and out of my room while I was allowed a trial of labor after two c-sections were from State too.  And after Patrick was born his care was taken over by the university's pediatrics clinic.  

At that point Sadie was taking skating lessons in their hockey arena through the city recreation district and we were just beginning to appreciate all that living near the university had to offer.

Sparty!

As Patrick got bigger we began to visit Daddy's school for fun and field trips!

Patrick plays on the grass during a visit with Daddy.

From seeing the bones of dinosaurs and mammoths at the museum to the bouncy ball display (they bounce up and down from the ceiling on strings!) in the modern art museum State definitely was at the center of many of my field trip plans.

The MOMA

 We've sat and watched the marching band practice on our way back from walking to the law school to visit Daddy.  Sadie and Daddy used a Groupon to catch a hockey game together.

 And one of Sadie's favorite places in the world is the school's fantastic botanical garden:

Here she is drawing her favorite flower, the Madagascar Periwinkle.

I think Maggie prefers the Children's Garden, with it's willow dragon that she can walk inside of:

It's where we went trick or treating (which was great because I'd been walking around all day wondering what we were going to do since we had costumes and no where to go!):

And it's given us educational opportunities that we definitely wouldn't have otherwise had, like student tickets to see a visiting Russian ballet present Cinderella, or a local company's performance of the Nutcracker:

But all that leaves out the #1 reason that I'm thankful that we live right next to the university.  It's the reason that even if we move across the country and never live in Michigan again, I will remain a lifelong State fan.

It was a resident from the university's program that sat with Mae for nearly an hour, talking with me and interacting with her, and then very gently explaining that she was certain that Mae was on the spectrum.  She was the one who made phone calls and pointed me in the direction that I needed to be pointed in to get the ball rolling with testing (I still haven't heard back from the form that I filled on the Michigan state (government) website in June requesting testing).

And when I was desperate to learn something and find some sort of program that would help me help Mae (especially when we were waiting for her paperwork to come through), it was on the school's psychology website that I found out about their autism lab, where Mae and I have been accepted into a study that is designed to teach parents to work with and teach their children.  We meet twice a week on Skype with a graduate student and talk about what I've learned and about how Mae  is doing and together we're designing a plan and goals for our interventions in the coming months.

We've only been here for 17 months.  I don't have green and white running in my veins because my parents and grandparents were fans.  My own degree doesn't say Michigan anywhere on it (then again, my own alma mater gave up it's football team after my senior year).  But I still found myself staying up until midnight last night to see who was going to win the big game and smiling from ear to ear when the screen flashed that the game was over and that the final score had Michigan State on top (and then I worried briefly about how crazy Paul's work was likely to be in light of the news, before drifting off to sleep).

 And that is my not so brief explanation to the question of why our family cheers for State... If that isn't a good enough reason, I don't know what is!

Bongo Drums, Mae and the 7th Day of Advent

Can you believe that the first week of Advent is already drawing to a close?  

Now that Sadie is old enough to have fun with the activities I'm coming up with Advent is quickly becoming my very favorite time of year.  And even Mae and Patrick are wide eyed when we do our daily routine of prayers and candles and readings.  

Today's note (which I didn't snap a picture of and then decided it's probably easier for everyone to read if I just copy and paste it anyways!) follows:

December 7^th, 2013

7^th Day of Advent

1^st Saturday of Advent

Dear Sadie, Maggie and Patrick,

The first week of Advent is coming to an end and the 3 Kings are continuing their search!  Tonight they came across a strange form of transportation they’d never seen before!  But they still didn’t catch a glimpse of the baby King!

And while one of our shepherds still seems to be missing a little drummer boy appeared.  I think he might have heard all the wonderful music that the three of you were making with the bongo drums last night and he wanted to join in! 

Have fun making ornaments and coloring!  I can’t wait to see what our brave little search parties come up with next in their search for the little baby King!

Yesterday during therapy Maggie began using the new container of diaper wipes as a drum and she absolutely loved drumming on it.  She came over and wanted me to drum with her and was thrilled to get everyone involved.  She wanted to dance to the drumming and then would run back and drum more herself.

Later in the day when we were out doing errands we stopped by Toys R' Us.  I had a gift certificate to spend and as I wandered the aisles, trying to think of something quickly since Paul had stayed in the car with the kids, I came across an aisle full of instruments and my eyes immediately fell on the bongo drums.  After deciding that these had the best sound I picked them up and used the card I'd had in my purse (that was about to expire!).

The drums inspired my addition to the shepherd's search, since one of our shepherds is still missing:

And Mae's reaction to the drums was very, very happy.  She and Patrick and Sadie were all drumming together at the same time.  She would even bring it over and want to drum with one or two of us at the same time (which is huge!!!).

So the drum was totally, totally worth the Friday trip into Toys R' Us during an afternoon in December... Because:

The shepherd and sheep joined in the block stacking fun she's been having to complete their part of the search for the day:

Mae's also taken an interest in the train tracks lately (lining them up side by side) so I thought I'd take some of them out of the box that they're usually in and set up a display that I knew would be destroyed about ten seconds after they came downstairs!  

And that is our 7th day of Advent!  The search for the baby king is still on!

Now to think up something special for tomorrow!