If Your Not Happy Change Your Expectations!

I love the quote above and remind myself of it often because with four young children nothing ever goes as expected so I am constantly fighting myself and find myself trying to become okay with the chaos life brings with four young children. It seems the more I plan and the more I try to have things in order the more often I have to let go of how I expected things to be! I hear of great traditions families lived or are living during these beautiful times of the year and have such great anticipation at starting them with our children. I felt as though I was fighting my way through most of them and when I found myself sitting on children while we were trying to complete prayers and stories I realized I needed to let go and we can do bits and pieces here and there and over the years we will eventually complete the task in full. It is not about the things as much as it is about the spirit in which we do them. So I would rather do a little with a lot of love rather than do a lot with little love! So here is where we are at so far.
Okay so here are the things we have accomplished so far and will continue to try and do in the future with our children in these precious days before Christmas...
1. Jesse Tree (partial success with this one) We have made one homemade ornament at this point (so in 24 years we will have a complete set at this rate!) and even had a Jesse tree party, but we just got the tree to put the ornaments on a couple of days ago because I never had an opportunity to go to the store after forgetting the one time I was there with the kiddos.
2. Christmas Tree Filled with Grace: The tree for this is still in the box and was only bought a couple of days ago for the same reason as above and since I have had it all of the kids have been super sick. We have the ornaments and the tree. The idea with this is to have a small (ours is 2ft) Christmas tree and small little ornaments (ours are from dollar store) every time you make a sacrifice or help someone out you put an ornament on the tree. It becomes a tree filled with little acts of love and grace. A couple of days before Christmas you pray about who to send the tree to and all of the prayers it contains and then you send it.

3. Advent Storybooks: We are reading Jothams Journey and there is a chapter for each day of advent. There are also two other books Bartholomew Passage and Tabitha's Travels. We are on Tuesday of the second week of Advent and we should be on Tuesday of the third week of Advent. We may finish in January, but no big deal rubbing backs of sick children and making tea takes priority over this wonderful advent tradition.

4. Christmas Basket Program: This is one of my favorites. This afternoon we began the first part of the Christmas basket by having the kids pick three of their toys to give to the Christmas Basket program. This is one of the greatest traditions. Today as I went with Annaliese to look at her dress up stuff I was so impressed with her attitude of giving. We pulled out her dress up stuff and anything she had two of we pulled out which was almost everything. We started with shoes and she found a perfect pair out of the four pairs she had and then she said we needed a crown so she picked one of the two and it was a little harder because she now only has one then she said a little girl needed a balleration (a leotard) I was so surprised she even mentioned this because these along with her princess dresses are her favorites. I then prompted that maybe a little girl who doesn't have dress up stuff may need a princess dress and she said well no this one fits me and this one fits me. She has three princess dresses and she does love all of them very very much. She went on to tell me because this fits me it won't fit anyone else. We came to the point where I said okay Annaliese but I know you could make God happy and some little girl very happy and she smiled and said okay I think this one will be perfect. (She put my favorite dress in the pile of stuff...ouch that hurts now I have to detach from the adorable dress that I love on Annaliese) It is funny how sometimes you can be more attached to your kids stuff than they are. She put the whole outfit together, but it was missing a necklace and a bracelet and she got it all and put it in a bag and said this is perfect! How adorable and what a loving/giving spirit sweet Annaliese has. No second thoughts no regrets it was done and it is as if it is not hers any longer. Tristan on the other hand was actually more reluctant than Annaliese to let go of his stuff. The things they have to pick have to mean something to them, it has to bring a little bit of sacrifice and detachment otherwise it would just be for the others and not for their formation as well. So Tristan got rid of some of his animals, but boy did it take him a long time. You saw his interior struggle as he would go through all of them and then he decided to give something pretty special to him, his marble run. I suggested it to him and he protested at first, but then was so proud of himself and could not wait for Branden to come home to show him what he was giving to some kid who does not have anything.
This is just the beginning of the Christmas Basket. Hopefully tomorrow we will go and wrap the presents and Thursday we will go deliver the nursing home bags and sing Christmas carols at the nursing home. Friday is sorting night and pizza and then Saturday we will deliver a box or two to a family filled with food and toys. I love our church!

5. The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mexican Fiesta and we went to the Hispanic celebration at our church. There were only about ten white people there and we were 6 out of the ten. What a neat experience and to have mass in spanish, participate in the parade in the streets of downtown Franklin and then end with a Mexican fiesta with dancing. I love our church

6. St. Lucy Feast day went totally different than expected we ended up at the hospital with Gavin and had sick children all day...nothing that i had planned happened that day!

7. After dropping off the toys at church for the Christmas basket (this was tonight) we go to see Christmas lights and stop to get hot chocolate and a donut that we eat in the car while driving around. When we see a snowman we sing frosty, when we see a reindeer we sing rudolph etc... Super fun times

8. Advent Calendar - Every morning the kids open up the doors on our Advent calendar and hang up the pieces

9. Advent Wreath - Made it one week into Advent with extra tree trimmings I found at home depot for free! We got the super cheap Christmas tree that fit into the budget but doesn't smell beautiful so we are getting the expensive Christmas tree smell by picking up the free scraps and using them as decorations throughout the house! We light the candles at dinner time, but have not accomplished the nightly prayers and scripture passages.

So as you can see we are trying and things are most definitely not perfect and they probably never will be! I hate the thought of that, but I must accept it and know that our disaster is beautiful to God!