Advent continued with as much contemplation as we could muster. We added Heaven and Nature Sing (from one of my favorite authors) to our book basket.
Our (almost) daily Advent tags reminded us that Jesus immersed Himself in our world (John 1:14)
As the weeks progressed, we lit more candles on the wreath
and continued reading The Advent of the Lamb of God alongside one of our favorite winter breakfast recipes: carrot cake oatmeal.
And before we knew it, school was out and our young adults came trickling in. We took a day trip to visit Aaron's dad and mom #2.
We always play lots of games when we're together, Settlers of Catan
and Seven Wonders are often popular choices.
We flailed around on the ice skating rink and laughed a bunch.
Aaron and I enjoyed playing our cellos for a Christmas Eve service.
All seven of us piled in the van, braved the cold, dark night, and went Christmas caroling.
Another one of our favorite traditions is building gingerbread houses.
Creating with baked goods and sugar is much easier when the weather is cold!
This year we made the fiery furnace with Daniel and his three friends.
While we formed flames and idols, Benjamin read Dicken's A Christmas Carol aloud, another one of our favorite traditions.
We also experienced quite a cold snap, which made one of the pipes underneath our bedroom burst just before we hosted a large group of extended family.
Everyone was so kind as we filled buckets of water at our next-door neighbor's spigot
and felt like we were living in the village again with no running water.
Both sides of our family filled our house with lots of laughter
and multiple generations.
And there was food and music
and just joyful chaos all around as we celebrated God's gift of family.
After two weeks of taking showers at the gym and grandparents' houses, the plumbers finally had space to come fix our leak, and once again we had running water!
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