May the celebration of Christmas and the coming new year bring you much joy in all the blessings that God has given to us through the birth, life, death and resurrection of His Son!

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Tonight’s advent activity was mainly an indulgence for our oldest son, because it was too advanced for the others to truly participate:Wii Night

Naturally, since he only gets to play with the Wii once every couple of months — at most — and we only have the built-in sports disc, he knew exactly what he wanted: baseball, then golf.

Photos are a little tricky, since we project the image onto a screen in a dark room. Nevertheless, here are a few photos.

Matthew swinging, pitching — with more or less the same motion:

Andrew getting a kick out of Matthew swinging at golf balls:

Calissa watching intently…

For tonight’s family advent activity, we opted to stay at home and cozy up in front of a fireplace and listen to an audio recording of a storytelling of a classic Christmas classic from Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol, as told by Jim Weiss.

We really enjoy Jim Weiss’ readings of numerous classic stories, and tonight’s retelling of Dickens’ classic tale of “conversion” was no exception.  Matthew was actually listening with rapt attention to the story of Ebenezer Scrooge.  He giggled at the name of Scrooge’s former employer, Mr. Fezziwig.  And we appreciated the part of the story where Scrooge experiences a change of heart as he realizes how much of his adult life has been spent in wrong fashion.

Of course, the children were partly helped in their attentiveness by the presence of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and cold milk.  Yummy!  We (the parents) helped ourselves to the cookies as well.  Here are some photos from tonight.

A real wood fire, none of that weak gas stuff!  And yummy cookies & milk!

Andrew and Mommy snuggling up together:

Close-up of the goodies:

Tonight’s activity was heading out after dinner to the annual Christmas in the Park display in downtown San Jose. There are dozens of Christmas trees on display, decorated by local schools, charities, and groups. In addition, there are a number of displays with moving figures, including choirs, Nutcrackers, animals, Santa’s elves, and a nativity scene.

Here are some photos from our excursion.

A few of the displays featured at the event:

The family enjoying the stroll and the lights:

After walking through Christmas in the Park, we headed over to the nearby Fairmont Hotel for their model train layout display, which the boys especially remembered. These displays feature panoramas resembling different countries from around the world:

Art

So… our #2, Andrew, walks up to Mommy this morning with artwork on an Etch-A-Sketch that he did.

“Mommy, I drew a gun.”

We don’t really play with toy guns much, but boys will be boys, and we like it that way!

And quite a gifted Etch-A-Sketch’er for a 3.5yo, if I may say so.

Improvisation

Later in the morning, living up to a previous post I blogged about what makes the best Christmas gifts, the same child decided to make the most of a recent UPS delivery:

I wonder if he’ll mind if those gifts under the tree disappeared…

Today the children had hot cocoa with Christmas themed marshmallows.

Matthew showing his Christmas tree marshmallow (with a goofy face):

Andrew and Emmie enjoying their hot cocoa:

Calissa just went straight for the marshmallow:

Our activity today was watching an animated film of Jesus’ birth.  We have been reading about the birth of Jesus during our morning devotions, and Matthew has a very clear understanding of all the events surrounding Jesus’ birth.  When King Herod first appeared in the video, Matthew shrunk back in fear for he knew what he was about to do, which was to slaughter all boys two years and under.  I reminded him that even though this atrocious event took place, Jesus still reigns and lives.

Here are the children watching the video: