One of our favorite Advent activities is to visit the Living Nativities in our town. This year, we visited two in one week. Local churches always put those events together and there are a great reminder of how life might have looked like in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. Not only are there animals to pet and feed (which my kids love the best) but there is also a nativity scene with humans in a stable as well as some crafts, hot cocoa and singing.
Last Monday, Amelia and I visited A Night In Bethlehem:
With lots of baby animals to pet:
And a little video collage:
We also had a couple of mornings with snowflakes coming down, but unfortunately not enough to cover the ground.
On December 6th, we celebrated St. Nikolaus Day and the children were very excited to find their boots filled with some goodies. They loved especially these miniature kittens (they even sound like a real ones).
Showing off her new holiday dress:
That same afternoon, our friend Bettina came over to bake Christmas cookies with us. I was really surprised that both children lasted over an hour before they got tired and left us to finish the decorating and cleaning the mess. We made 4 different kind of cookies and they are all delicious:
As every year, my company supports Cottage Grove Urban Ministries in Nashville and the employees (yes, upper management and the CEO included) volunteer one Friday in December in two shifts to help decorate, assemble bicycles and wrap gifts for the less fortunate families in town.
As a thank you and as part of the holiday season, the company caters a delicious lunch for all the employees. This is a truly a great way to help the community and it's amazing what our team can accomplish in just 7 hours.
On Friday night, I attended a Christmas gathering for all the ladies at our church. Everyone brought a side dish and after a prayer and a little song performance, we all mingled and tried our hand at different craft projects.
Even Santa came by for a visit:
I enjoyed meeting some new faces at church and loved the crafts. The next morning, we ventured out to buy our Christmas tree and while I say this every year, we found the perfect one:
600 lights and some ornaments later, here is the finished tree. The kids did a great job of not overloading the tree and I only had to rearrange a couple of ornaments this year (which if you know me, is nothing).
This year, I tried something different with the tree top and really like how those added branches add more volume to the top:
Sunday was a full day for us: it all started off with the Children's Nativity play "Angels Say What?" at church , which was great.
In the afternoon, we drove down to Opryland Hotel to look at some of their Christmas decorations before Amelia's tap dance performance.
Every year, Amelia's dance studio is invited to participate in the Gaylord Orpyland Holiday Show and this was Amelia's first time ever to dance in front of an audience outside of the studio. She was glowing with excitement and did really well.
We even had the chance to cheer on our little friend Everly and her class performing to Mele Kalikimaka.
Despite it being already past their bed time when we left the hotel, we still stopped by Elliot's preschool to visit their Living Nativity. Here, we were able to feed the animals and have a family picture taken within the nativity scene.
I even found myself a new little friend, I wanted to take home:
Hearing the children sing about Jesus being born was the best way to finish off an eventful weekend.
Luckily, due to icy roads, school was delayed a couple of hours this morning and we were able to sleep in a bit. Now, I'm resting at home as I have bronchitis and the flu (luckily, Elliot and Amelia tested negative) and I hope to be back to normal to celebrate my little boy's 5th birthday on Thursday.
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