Advent Candles

When I was unpacking our Christmas box last month, I came across a beautiful advent candle holder that we got years back and never got out to use. Since Michael is getting older and really getting into the Christmas traditions, we thought this would be a good year to start. So, I went out looking for candles. Tim wanted to go with the traditional three purples, a pink, and a white. I had no problem with a large white candle for the middle, but that was when my success ended. There were orange candles, and yellow candles, and all the left over fall colors. In the rest of the color sets, the tall taper candles had been replaced by incense sticks and I wasn't quite sure that would work....

Finally at one store I found red and green and decided we'd go with that. Then we got out Michael's children's Bible, thinking we could read a page each day at dinner and work through the Christmas story during the month. I got out a set of manger scene figures to help also. (On a side note, it is an adorable wooden manger scene with figures great for little ones to play with. There is Mary, Joseph, an angle, baby Jesus, a sheep, a cow, a donkey, and three magi. Notice anything missing? There are no shepherds, not even one. So in our story, a sheep had to come visit the baby instead.)

Michael and Jon both loved the candles and the stories went great. Now, however, with Christmas over we have decided to continue for this week. We spent most of the last week and a half at my dad's house with family, so last night was the first chance we've had to light the fifth candle. And we still have the magi part of the story to read, and since our manger scene can actually accommodate that we figured we shouldn't leave it out.

I've also taken on a new challenge for this year. It's called project 365 and means that it is my goal to take a picture a day for the whole year. I'm hoping to put them in a book together. Here is my first page.