Advent beginnings.....

Happy 1st day of the Advent!  What a glorious way to transition from focusing on gratitude,  contentment and thankfulness...to joyous preparation!  We've been preparing to celebrate the birth of our Savior...yes, decorating the house for our celebration and focusing on preparing our hearts to receive the ultimate gift...Jesus Christ.

I collect nativity sets.   A number of years ago, we made a conscious decision to try and make our Christmas celebrations visually as well as spiritually focused on the Lord...not on the commercial or material hype...and since we do well with visual reminders...we try and make our decorations meaningful to us.  We've also been feeling the Lord leading us to simplify...a lot....some simplifying is for health reasons...some for financial...but really...I think He just wants us to simply focus on Him....and sometimes, with the distractions of this world...especially at this time of year, that is hard to do.

As we have for years, we will be doing Advent devotions with our advent wreath every Sunday of Advent.   Ever since my older girls were little, we've used our homeschooling lesson time for the month leading up to Christmas to just do the basics ...a little spelling, grammar and math....and focus on unit studies about Jesus and Christmas.  The unit studies we've used can be found http://easyfunschool.com/IndexChristmas.html  at this link.  We always do the names of Jesus study, the Christmas symbol study and Christmas Hymn studies.

We will also be doing a Jesse tree and devotional from Anne at A Holy Experience.   We're trying to take every opportunity when the subject of gifts comes up, to talk about Jesus being the greatest gift of all.  If Christmas lights and light displays comes up, we talk about John 1:5...and Jesus being the light of the world.  We have some wonderful family times planned...not too many activities this year...and all of us as a family and all centered around Jesus...a special time for our family to enjoy...and to keep our focus on the gift of Jesus.

In the coming days...I'll be sharing some of our special books, devotions, traditions and special times that we have planned to focus our hearts on the gift of the Light of the World....and I hope to hear how all of you are celebrating this very special time!  ~Sue~