Preparing for Christmas 2016

Yesterday as I publish was Gaudete Sunday, the beginning of the third week of Advent. The priest wore his rose-colored vestments at Mass and people are lighting the pink candles on their Advent wreaths. Advent, the season of preparing for the coming of Christ, is half over. We have been preparing for Christmas at home, getting up our decorations.

We put our tree up last week and discovered we didn't have enough lights. Actually, we had two strings of lights "retire" since they weren't working anymore. We made a trip to the store to get some extra white lights (which are not extra-white, in case you are wondering).

Working together to build the tree

Sorting out limbs by length

The first placement/lighting of the tree

We decided to hold back on ornaments and let the children put one on when they did a good deed. So the tree is slowly filling up.

After more lights, a move, and some ornaments

While Granny was visiting, we put her to work on our new Advent calendar. It is a wooden tree with twenty-four drawers, one for each day of December before Christmas. We left numbers off so that the seven pink drawers could be switched around, since the third week of Advent isn't always the same days in the month (the third Sunday in Advent can be anywhere from December 11 to 17).

Awesome looking Advent Calendar (thanks, Granny!)

We also have a wreath for our dinner table which the kids are always excited to use. It's a Celtic ring, so it doesn't have the usual greenery. We are okay with that since we need the table space for food and stuff.

Blowing out the candles

My daughter has decorated a gingerbread house. She loves the kits (that way we don't have to bake the walls, roof, etc.). It turned out quite well.

Front of the gingerbread house

Back of the house