advent day #20 - ???

Okay, so we have definitely deviated from our original Advent calendar plans for the past few days. Hopefully, tomorrow we can get back on track.




Letty wanted it to be another baking day!

BUT, today, we had another craft day. We made Santa hat and stocking ornaments for Ivy to give to all of her dance friends at a Christmas party to occur after her dance class this week.





I must say the ornaments really turned out to be cute. I just wish we would have had the correct spellings of all of the girls' names so that we could have written them on to the ornaments.

Ivy had a really special suggestion that I simply must share. On the backs of the ornaments, we wrote "Merry Christmas! 2010 From: IVY." (Ivy signed her own name.) As she was signing her name to all of the ornaments, she looked up at me and said, "Mama, I think we should put my memory verse on the back here, too!" I inquired further, "Do you mean write the whole verse out?" to which Ivy answered, "Yes!" Then, I had to explain that there was not enough room to write it all out and suggested that we just write the reference to where we can find our memory verse in the Bible instead, to which Ivy remarked, "Yes, let's write the reference so that they can get their Bibles and read the verse once they get home, or their parents can read it to them." "OK, what is the reference, Ivy?" I asked, to which Ivy said, "John 3:16." I'm so proud of her!

Since we were talking about dance (and since this happended today anyways), I figured I would put this picture in...



Ivy AND OWEN put on a little dance recital. Ivy is wearing her tap shoes, and YES, Owen is wearing Ivy's ballet shoes! (Let's not show this picture to Daddy!) :-)

Later in the afternoon, Nathan, Letty, and I went Christmas shopping for the kids while Ivy got to hang out with Grammy Lou and Auntie Lily and Owen got to hang out with Nana and Georgie's fish!

Before bed, we worked on our memory verse (Ivy pretty much has it! Yeah for Ivy!), and we read more of the Christmas story from the book of Luke.

Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon,... and he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus,...he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, "Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel." ~Luke 2:25a, 27-32