(And All My) Work Be Praise

Or, what happens when the eleven-days-past-due-date coincide with the two-weeks-of-Christmas-goodies gluttony. Monday, January 6, 5:15am. Eleven days past due date. I wake up to go to the bathroom like I do every morning about this time, only this time, when I lay back down, it finally happens: a contraction . Now, I've been having contractions on and off for about three days, but not of the sort that gets anyone excited about labor actually starting any time soon. Fact is, I've almost reached the point where I seriously doubt I will ever give birth to this baby. But the contractions continue, and they actually hurt a little!, and within an hour they've moved from 10 minutes apart to 4-5 minutes apart. Progress! Hooray! The necessary people are called (Grace, my midwife, and Melanie, her assistant, to start over, and Isaac's mom, to come get the three older boys), the birth tub is filled, the boys' bags are packed for a night at Oma's. Already things aren...

Books: The Snowy Day   (by Ezra Jack Keats) , Stranger in the Woods   (by Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick) , Katy and the Big Snow (by Virginia Lee Burton) -- all books we own, so no library trip necessary Craft:  Shiny Silver S Food: snow ice cream Bible story: Moses and the bronze serpent Resources and printables: Read to Me & ABC  and Royal Baloo I really hadn't intended to be doing any preschool in the early weeks of January. I had, of course, expected to be having a baby at the end of December, and to take it easy (translation: dump out all the toys and watch a whole lot of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood ) for a while. But January 1 rolled around, all of our celebrating was long over with, we were all bored with being at home, and there was a big snowfall predicted for January 2. So I pulled up my "s is for snowman" packet, and the S page from our Bible curriculum, and threw together a few activities. The salvation stuff in ABCs for Godly Boys ...

As I've mentioned, one of the concerns with doing the gift-giving portion of Christmas on St. Nicholas Day is what to do with Christmas morning. The kids don't know the difference, but Isaac and I are still working out how to make the morning meaningful, in a Christ-centered way. Eating breakfast (gingerbread waffles) by the light of the Advent "wreath." After breakfast, Isaac read the whole Christmas story (from Gabriel appearing to Mary through the coming of the wise men) from the Jesus Storybook Bible . I printed off this paper nativity  and had the big boys help me move the characters towards the stable at the right time. Daddy reading. The angel appears to the shepherds in their "field." Totally  into it. Levi wanted most of the people to be facing baby Jesus.  (I love the wise man riding the camel in the front.) Isaac thought perhaps we should've let the boys color the paper before acting out the story, but I rat...