Advent activities

Yesterday, after much changing of our plans (flexibility!) most of the children and I drove down to Virginia and enjoyed a lovely potluck lunch with some other homeschool moms. We shared some of our Advent traditions while the little children played and the older ones worked on crafts. We even managed to squeeze in a trip to the Commissary on the way out and avoided most of the Beltway traffic before picking up Tim and Will at the hospital. Will had a nice lunch with his daddy and even got to go to Admiral's call, a real treat.

In all our racing around trying to get every one's shoes on, brownies made, coloring books and sippy cup ready for Mass, I forgot to bring anything to show the group. So here are some pictures of our Advent preparations. I set up the nativity set with just the animals waiting for the Holy Family next to the scraggly Advent wreath that we made the first winter we were in Italy.

We also have a nativity Advent calender, which the children take turns putting up (each piece is numbered on the back) and the chocolate Advent calenders are always a big hit.

I have a huge stack of Christmas books which we read from every night, which include some of my favorites.