Happy Thanksgiving and Blessed Advent!
So how was your Thanksgiving? We had a wonderful weekend. All of our family lives close by, which means we don't have to travel for the holidays. It also means that we always have two Thanksgiving feasts, one at my parents' and one at my in-laws'. And that means we spent the weekend eating a ton of food. But remarkably, no turkey: antipasti, lasagna, and cannoli with the Italian side, and a casual (but gigantic) meal plus karaoke and cards with the Filipino side.
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| yum, right? |
The rest of the weekend was rainy, which meant lots of chores around the house. I printed off our Advent memory work, finished lesson plans for the rest of the term, started sewing some gifts, and got a start on Christmas shopping (online, from the comfort of my cozy home). I also slept in (!) a couple of mornings and ran a couple times too...so pretty much a perfect fall weekend is what I'm saying.
I planned to post this morning, but the day just got away from me--I almost always feel like that coming off a long weekend. I hope your holiday was as refreshing as ours!
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The kids did a little Thanksgiving crafting last week:
Their egg carton wreaths came out lovely and are now adorning the grandparents' houses. (We used this tutorial. A poinsettia version would make a fun Christmas craft, I think.)
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Sunday was the beginning of the new liturgical year and the first Sunday of Advent. We began our Advent devotions by reading a couple pages from The Way to Bethlehem and a poem by Christina Rossetti, blessing and lighting our Advent wreath for the first time, beginning the St. Andrew novena, and playing the first Christmas music of the year.
(We are geeks and have our Christmas music collection split into two CDs: one for Christmas and one for Advent. We try to stick with the Advent selections until Christmas Eve, when we finally start playing our Christmas CD. Does anyone else save Christmas music until the official Christmas season? I have to admit, our family custom was borne partly from a desire to maintain the Church's liturgical seasons and partly from my own preservation instinct. I like Christmas music, but a few weeks in, I'm ready to shelve the CDs until next year. So if we hold off, my enthusiasm lasts until Epiphany, as it should. Just me?)
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Speaking of Christmas music, my husband surprised me with a wireless speaker last week. We don't have a television or a stereo system, so we play everything on our laptop, and the sound is never quite clear enough or loud enough. With this speaker, I can blast our audiobook from the other side of the room rather than having us all huddled around the computer straining to listen! We can hear our Italian CDs even when my toddlers are in chaos mode! The kids can do their memory-work march through the house and still hear "Stars and Stripes Forever" well enough to sing along! I can lie on the sofa with a book and turn on Chopin in the other room to drown out the tantrums encourage my kids in their love for classical music. A very useful addition to our homeschool.
If you don't already have a stereo dock or wireless speaker for your phone/tablet/laptop, I highly recommend adding one to mama's Christmas list.
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Speaking of Christmas lists, I have a few more suggestions:
:: my two favorite education-related books of the year: Laurie Bestvater's The Living Page and Karen Glass' Consider This
:: the two-pack Moleskin Volant notebooks, which I have been using for my commonplace books this year (I like the "large plain," but they come in smaller sizes and ruled)
:: the Prismacolor illustration markers that we use for all our drawing and Keeping (you can buy singles of particular nib widths on Dick Blick--I like .005)
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Some very sweet artwork around the house lately...
Gianna and Cate sent off their saint cards for Kimberlee's swap last week.
They can't wait to see which cards they get in return!
And I can't resist sharing Cate's most recent family portrait:
(FYI: Apparently my husband and I are not making lovey-dovey eyes at each other; we are "whispering things." Either way, it's going on the wall!)
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Happy Monday, friends!
Oh my goodness. That cannoli!!!! I'm on a diet too...thanks, alot. ;) I added the pens & Moleskine to my huge Amazon list. ;) And I just ADORE the family portrait and you and your husband "whispering things". PRECIOUS!
ReplyDeleteYeah, my mom is an amazing cook--those cannoli are made with homemade ricotta, homemade pizzelle...she outdoes herself every feast. And I'm on a diet too! :/ LOL
DeleteHi there - I'm intrigued by the idea of advent music; other than O Come O Come Emmanuel, nothing leaps to mind. What else is there? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHi Karis! We have a few particularly Advent-y songs on our playlist: O Come O Come Emmanuel, On Jordan's Bank, People Look East, Alma Redemptoris Mater. I also include secular "Christmas" songs during Advent, which are more about wintertime and "the holiday season" than Christmas (songs like Jingle Bells, It's a Marshmallow World, Frosty the Snowman, etc). And then we add in songs that are about preparing for Christmas rather than actually celebrating it (songs like It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, Home for the Holidays, etc.). So it's a pretty full list, actually. Can you tell I'm a tad Type-A? LOL
DeleteLove it. Thanks for the guidance!
ReplyDeleteI love the sweet family portrait!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Nelleke! (By the way, I'm not sure if it was there before and I somehow missed it, but I see a picture in your avatar now! So nice to put a face to the name/blog. :))
DeleteHappy Thanksgiving and Blessed Advent to you too! I trust you realize how very, very blessed you are by those simple words 'All of our family lives close by.' What joy! (and that cannoli looks so fabulous!)
ReplyDeleteWe do the same thing with music - we actually listen to our first Christmas music in the wee hours when we get home from midnight Mass and have our first taste of all the cookies we've baked. We have the Benedictines' CD Advent at Ephesus for Advent music selections - it's very lovely.
And I think you are perhaps whispering lovey-dovey sweet nothings? Or maybe just how blessed you are by all those smiling children? ;-) Wonderful portrait.
Yes, Kimberlee--I'm quite sure all our whispering has to do with these lovely kids of ours. <3
DeleteWe are very thankful to have family close by. It has been a financial sacrifice to live in this area (literally one of the most expensive places to live in the country), and we have thought about moving many times. But having both sides of family close by has been worth it for us. I saw your intimate Thanksgiving celebration on your blog, and that was beautiful too. :)
I think my kids would wish my Italian background was a little stronger! Lasagna and cannoli for Thanksgiving sounds awesome :-) We do make pizzelle for Christmas... though it was my French-Canadian grandmother who started the tradition!
ReplyDeleteYes, the lasagna-for-Thanksgiving tradition began because we used to spend every Thanksgiving with my dad's parents when I was growing up (Christmas was at my mom's parents'). My little Italian grandmother did not make turkey, but she could make a mean lasagna. My mom has maintained the tradition, much to our delight. :)
DeleteAnd I think pizzelle, like Nutella, has crossed international boundaries. ;)
I used to have separate Advent and Christmas playlists, but something happened over the last year and my Advent playlist is gone. I was so annoyed! I've been cherry picking my music collection and selectively skipping songs, but I really need to sit down and recreate the playlist. Ugh! And I do the same thing, I include some of the more secular Christmas/Winter type songs on the Advent list, both because they seem appropriate, and also so that we aren't just listening to the five different versions of O Come, O Come Emmanuel we own over and over again. :-)
ReplyDeleteAnd those wreaths are lovely - as are the children's family drawings. I love seeing their perspective like that.
Oh me too--their little drawings are like windows into their minds.
DeleteAnd I'm glad to hear I'm not the only crazy one with two playlists! :)