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St. Nicholas Day 2012

Obviously, I need a new way to hang stockings.

I wrote last year about our family's experiment with exchanging gifts on St. Nicholas Day (December 6). This year, my husband and I co-wrote an article for our church newsletter about the same thing.  You can read it here: http://eccfellowship.org/archives/newsletters/2012nl/201212nl.pdf  Scroll down to page six.

Boys laying out blankets to sit on. Someday, I'll have a nice rug in this room.

We started our morning in the German tradition with stutenkerl, man-shaped sweet bread with raisin eyes. Honestly, I think they're a little creepy. 


Decapitating the stutenkerl . . . 




Hey, don't I get one, too?! 

After breakfast, we opened our stockings. I think the age and understanding of my children is apparent from the fact that they want to eat breakfast before opening presents. I spent the rest of the day mediating fights over the new James train. 

It still feels a little odd to have that part of the season (exchanging gifts) over for our home, but as I look at all of the things we still have to do in the rest of December, I'm glad to have it done. Hopefully, the remainder of 2012 will be just a little less hectic -- and a little more focused on the expectant waiting of Advent and the wonder of the Incarnation!

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