Advent: Day 2

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Kimberly

It is fun to see Elias so excited about his advent calendar…even if it is probably mostly because he just wants the chocolate inside. This morning the first thing he wanted to do when he woke up was turn on the Christmas tree lights. Then he wanted me to get the flashlight so that he could look in the tree. But then…he ran to his advent calendar and wanted to take out an activity card and chocolate. I made him wait until snack time.

When I told Elias to look for the number 2, he got a bit ambitious and took out the stuff for number 20. But no worries. I put it back and he eventually found the 2 with some help. Today’s activity said, “Decorate Christmas cards and send them to loved ones.”

Elias loves rubber stamps so I bought him some Christmas rubber stamps. I even wrapped them up to make it more fun for him. Then, I got out some Christmas cards, and he enjoyed stamping a few of the cards and envelopes. In the end, though, he just wanted to stamp on plain white paper and I let him. We can decorate more cards another day.

When Daddy got home, we did our Jesse tree reading and ornament. Today was the creation story.  It was very long for a toddler. He mostly wanted to talk about the colors of his crayons rather than listen to the story…and he mostly wanted to color the back instead of the front of the ornament. But after we finished reading it, I talked to Elias about the story. I pointed to the picture on his ornament and said, “Look at all these things God made. He made trees and…” Elias interrupted me and said, “He made big hills!” Elias also pointed out that God made birds and stars. So I think it was a success.

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Advent: Day 1

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Kimberly

Yesterday, on the first day of advent, we had some great family fun. At Sunday school, Elias got to sing some songs to practice for the Christmas pageant, and then he learned that the first candle on the advent wreath is called the Promise Candle because of the promise God made to send a savior for us.

In the afternoon and evening we had our family advent celebrations.

Here is Elias looking for the number 1 on his advent calendar. He quickly discarded the paper inside, and promptly asked us to cut his chocolate up into three pieces.

Our first advent candle lit during dinner.

Nathan reading the Jesse Tree reading for day 1 while Elias colored his first ornament.

Elias’ masterpiece on our Jesse Tree. This morning at breakfast, Elias pointed to the ornament and said, “I made that.” I was glad he took pride in it. We’ll have many more to come!

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Christmas Tree Adventures (In Pictures)

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Kimberly

We got our Christmas Tree today…and we didn’t even get that wet! It sprinkled a bit on us, but we missed the worst of the rain. That is probably because we are bad people and skipped church…well…not totally. We took Elias to Sunday School, signed up for some Christmas basket items, made a donation to the church library, talked to a few people, and then left before the actual service.

As usual, we went to the Christmas Tree Farm to cut down our own tree. Elias was excited to get all bundled up, and was even more excited when we got there and he saw Ama and Baba had met us. Here he is looking for that perfect tree:

When we found our tree, we took a family shot in front of it, but Elias just wanted to use the camera himself, and we ended up pretty much covering up the entire tree so you can’t see it…but nonetheless…here we are:

Then Nathan went about cutting it down. After getting ours to the truck, we went back into the tree field to find Nana’s tree. We found that one without much trouble, and Nathan cut it down as well. He claims he will have sore triceps tomorrow…

Next we headed to Ama and Baba’s house to play, eat lunch, and help them set up their tall tree!

Later in the evening after dinner, Ama and Baba brought over our tree and helped us set it up. To my dismay, two bees flew out of it almost as soon as we had it standing! Luckily, my Dad was quick on the draw and we got them outside…but boy was I paranoid. I was having a very hard time controlling myself…I didn’t want to freak out in front of Elias. Actually, despite my attempts, he still noticed I was distressed and started saying things like “Mommy’s ok.” What a sweet boy.

My Dad and Nathan thoroughly checked the tree for more signs of bees. They had out head lamps and flashlights. Elias, of course, wanted in on that action. We got him a little flashlight, and he said he was “helping Daddy.” At first, he just shined the light on Nathan’s head which I got a picture of…it was hilarious:

We convinced Elias that he had to lay down and shine the light in the tree…this is what he did next:

Finally, we got him correctly oriented, and he shined the light into the tree just like his Daddy. Actually, he wanted to do that for most of the rest of the night. He kept asking Baba and Daddy to lay on their tummies and “play.” Then he kept saying “no bees, no spiders.” Of course I didn’t get a picture of any of that.

Our final glitch in the night was when we tried to put lights into our tree. We have used two strands of LED lights for the last two years. This year…one of them didn’t work. So unfortunately, only the bottom half of our tree is lit for now. Here is Elias “helping” with the lights.

Despite a bit of rain, bees, and broken lights, we had a wonderful time getting our tree today. What a great family tradition!

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Ready For Advent!

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Kimberly

We’re ready for advent in the Smith household…and just in time…because it starts tomorrow on December 2nd! I really wanted advent to be a meaningful period of time for myself and my family so I searched and thought for a long time about how to observe it, and activities we could do with a toddler to teach him and prepare him for Christmas. On the other hand…the holidays are already such a busy time, and I did not just want to fill our days with more “stuff” to do. It is a hard balance!

This year, we’ll be doing a Jesse Tree. I prepared all of the ornaments today while Elias was napping. They are set next to our bare Jesse Tree awaiting use. Each day, Elias will color one ornament and add it to the tree. We’ll have a story from scripture to read that goes along with it. I’m excited to do this too, even though it’s geared toward children. I’ve never done a Jesse Tree before and I think we’ll all be able to learn a little from it.

I also have filled the advent calendar I made for Elias. Each day of advent has a pocket, and I’ve filled it with a chocolate and a card. The card tells Elias something we’ll do to observe advent that day.  I’ve put in a lot of work ahead of time so that our advent will hopefully be fun, focused, and meaningful. We’ll see how it goes!

Elias’ advent calendar ready to go!

An example of what is in each pocket.

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Big Christmas Tree!

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Kimberly

Elias took this picture of the tree. (Mommy helped get the tree in the viewfinder, then he pressed the button)

Even though I have not yet posted our winter 2012 bucket list (or made it for that matter), we have our list written down and ready for action. One of the items on there was to see the Christmas Tree in Pioneer Courthouse Square. Elias loved seeing the Zoo lights, and he loves pointing out a very tall tree in our neighborhood every time we walk past…so we thought he we really enjoy the combination.

We had a free evening, so after Elias woke up from his nap, we grabbed some yummy dinner and headed downtown for a fun outing. It was raining a bit, but that didn’t really “dampen” our fun much.

It was fun as usual to watch Elias see and experience things for the first time. The whole time walking up Elias guessed that it would be a purple tree. When we actually saw it, he was very excited by the star. Another successful bucket list item completed!

The whole family in front of the tree. I’m not sure what Elias was looking at.

Elias looking at the star on top of the tree

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Thank You and a Baby Update

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Kimberly

First of all, Nathan and I (and Elias and baby) want to say a huge thank you to everyone involved with our baby shower open house celebration. It was so much fun to share it with lots of our family and some friends too! We feel so honored and blessed with the love and kindness and excitement and support we’ve received.

To the left is a picture of the top of our beautiful (and very tasty) cake! I didn’t actually get a picture of the whole cake, but two other people did so I’ll probably get one later for the baby book. For now….this will help me remember. We had cute decorations and good food and best of all, good people to spend our Saturday morning with. Elias even had a few play mates come to celebrate (although as normal, he mostly talked about them rather than played with them).

So what’s going on with the pregnancy?

1. I’ve been craving pineapple. Pineapple was one of my only requests for the open house. I enjoyed the left overs afterward as well. Here I have picture my belly with some yummy pineapple…it is the baby, after all, that is making me want to eat all this….right?

2. 30 weeks…I’ve passed the 30 week mark which means that I am over 3/4 of the way through and we have less than 10 weeks left until the due date. Nathan and I have moments of minor panic, and moments of excitement to meet our new little guy. We really have not done that much to prepare. The first time through we did stuff all through the nine months. This time I’m like….meh….the baby just needs a place to sleep…we’ll be fine. I know we’ll be doing more than that to prepare, but it really is amazing how different it is the second time around.

3. I’m getting big. I’ve been quite self conscious about my body recently, and have not wanted to post pictures. But I think I will post one of today for the benefit of out of town friends and relatives.

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More singing

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Nathan

We have these new angel figurines which play songs and do little animatronic dances with each other. Really a pair of whiz-bang Christmas knicknacks. Each angel leads two carols, so we have a total of four.

Elias has really taken a liken to these since he already enjoyed pushing buttons and watching electronic gizmos whirr to life. But what has been really fun is that he’s learned the abridged Christmas carols and now sings along. So now his repertoire includes “Hark! the herald angels sing,” “Angels we have heard on high,” “Joy to the world,” and “Silent night.” Not bad!

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Angel Takes On Darth Vader

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Kimberly

Here is a moment I hope I never forget….

Nathan got Elias some toddler Star Wars action figures for his birthday. Elias can name them all. He’s got yoda, boba fett, r2d2, chewbaca, a storm trooper, darth vader, and freepo (c3po). Anyway, the day that Elias opened them, he had fun lining them up and looking at them…but Nathan decided that they needed to have some light saber fights. So he pretended to have two of them fight, and then one flew off into the distance while the other was the victor.

Elias, as you can imagine, picked up on that instantly. He started having his star wars people “fight” too…which really just meant he clapped them together and then let them go off in opposite directions.

Then, one time a few days later during play, I told Elias that they should kiss and make up. So I went and got the two star wars people and had them kiss and make up. Well…somehow it turned into a little ritual for him. Elias now has his star wars people first kiss, then fight. He thinks it is quite fun and funny.

Since there are seven star wars figures, someone usually gets left out…they kiss and fight in pairs, you know….sometimes one of them gets to go twice. Yesterday, Darth Vader was the odd man out. I asked Elias, “Who is going to kiss and fight Darth Vader?” Elias looked around for a long time, then ran over to his nativity play set, grabbed the angel, and said, “angel.”

I had my own private little giggle fit as Elias had the angel kiss Darth Vader (“MMMMMMMM-TWAH” is the sound he makes for the kiss). Then they “fought” and it was quite fun to watch.

I don’t know if anyone else will think it is funny, or if I even told the story well….but it will stick in my mind for a long while…hopefully forever.

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Enjoying the Sun With My Son

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Kimberly

Yesterday was so beautiful here in Portland. Cold. But beautiful. The air was dry. They sky was blue, and there was a crisp, clean feel to the air. It felt like summer in the winter. I had to take my boy with me for a Costco run…we just needed too many things to spend the whole day playing. But as soon as we got that finished, we hurried outside for a walk to the park. Elias loved it. He loved crunching the leaves under his feet. He loved wearing his sunglasses (that was a first). He loved swinging and watching birds. I’m so glad we got one last chance to have the sun on our faces before another long stretch of grey, rainy days.

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Zoo Lights #1

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Kimberly

Elias and Daddy stand in front of the dragon at Zoo Lights!

We had some beautiful, relatively cold, yet dry weather today. Therefore, Nathan and I thought it would be fun to make our first annual trip to see zoo lights at the Oregon Zoo. We got there shortly before opening, and man…it was crowded! I guess it is still opening weekend.

Zoo lights this year was a completely different experience than last year. Last year Elias had only been walking for a short time and was still very

Elias looking on in wonder at the displays on the green. Here he is watching the elephants.

unstable…especially at the zoo on rough pavement with tons of hills. He looked at the lights a bit last year, but it was nothing compared to this year.

Elias had a blast! He constantly shouted out the colors of lights he was seeing, and the animals he spotted. He said things like “amazing” and “wow” which melted my heart. He especially loved the display with the baby and mama elephants squirting water.

Afterward when we got in the car, he was reciting all the colors of lights he remembered seeing. It was so fun to see his awe and wonder and excitement. We can’t wait to go again.

A couple more picture from our visit:

Elias helped take this picture of a cool light display.

Elias watching the carousel lights.

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