Circling Through This Life

Thank you Ancient Faith Publishing for providing the coloring book Beautiful Christmas for review. Coloring is not just a great way to practice fine motor skills but it is also a wonderful tool for exercising your brain. When you color you develop planning skills and build your creativity muscles. My special needs daughter is developmentally delayed both cognitively and physically. While chronologically outside the intended age range of 5-12 this coloring book was perfect for where she is developmentally. From the back the cover: Beautiful Christmas is a 64-page coloring book for children aged 5-12. As they color Christ in the cave or the shepherds glorifying God with the angels, they are cultivating their own sensibility to beauty while learning to recognize some of the meaningful symbols, elements, and motifs of the Church. May this small book bless those children who color and create within its pages. I love the wide variety of coloring pages.  Some pictures have la...

Christmas is right around the corner and now is the perfect time to be thinking about a special personalized gift for the loved ones on your list! Members of the Homeschool Review Crew have had the opportunity to choose from a variety of name meaning gifts including a Personalized Framed Plaque with Name Meaning and Bible Verse from CrossTimber . I want to share my experience with all of you. Before I could order, I had to choose. I was torn. We were given the opportunity to review ONE gift. How was I going to choose? I could not make up my mind. I started by emailing John at CrossTimber.  I shared with him that I was having a difficult time making up my mind. I have four daughters so I didn't want to pick one of them and not pick the others so I went in a different direction. I gave John my husband's name and my name. A couple's name plaque would be nice! My niece had gotten married only a few weeks before so I asked about her name and her new husband. Maybe I wo...

I do not decorate for every season, nor do I decorate for every holiday. I decorate for fall/Thanksgiving and am starting to do more decorating for Pascha (Easter) but Christmas?  Well, I love decorating for Christmas. Many, many years ago I gave away all of our Christmas decorating stuff because we were in our “Christmas is Pagan and we don’t celebrate it phrase” (You can read a bit about our journey back to celebrating by reading my Christmas: It’s Not a Birthday Party blog post from last year.) I’ve been re-building our Christmas collection over the years. I still haven’t convinced my husband that we need outdoor decorations but that’s ok.  He lets me have at it with the inside of the house!  This year we did not do as much decorating as I have in the past.   But this post isn’t about putting up decorations.  It’s about taking them down.  When to take them down and what to do with them between now and next Christmas. When I was growing up we always k...

Food plays an enormous role in our Christmas celebrations. We don’t just eat special foods on Christmas Eve or Christmas but we spread out special foods from December 24th through January 6th.  We don’t always eat the same foods on the same day each year but we do eat the same foods or this year a variation of the same foods. Every year we have Buffalo Style Chicken Wings . I think these are the best chicken wings in the universe and the only ones that come close are the ones from Buffalo Wild Wings.  Seriously, these are good.  Crispy, flavorful, and you make it as hot or mild as you like. We started out making these for Christmas Eve and then switched it over to New Year’s Eve. They’re great for Super Bowl Parties, if you do those kinds of things.  They’re also wonderful as a special movie night “junk food” dinner meal. I had to modify the 8 Minute Cheesecake this year to make it work for my husband and I. Same basic idea *but* I used heavy cream and whipped it ...

Celebrating the 12 days of Christmas is more of a Western tradition than an Eastern Tradition; however, many American Orthodox Christians view the time from December 25th through (and including) January 5th as the 12 Days of Christmas. January 6th is the Feast of Theophany. In the West, January 6th is Epiphany. Epiphany is the visit of the Magi or Wise Men and some view it as the 12th day of Christmas ( Dec 26 would then be day 1).  Theophany is the celebration of the Lord’s baptism in the Jordan river and the revealing of Jesus as the Son of God. Liturgically the Orthodox church does not celebrate 12 Days. I think I read it is 6 Days.  I think the “Leaving Taking of the Nativity” is Dec 29 or Dec 30?  January 1st is celebrated as the Circumcision of our Lord and it is also St. Basil’s Day. For my family we love that celebrating the Incarnation of God can be stretched out.  Without the Incarnation, there could be no redemption but that is a meaty topic for another...

It’s only October.  We still have to get through Halloween, my anniversary, and Thanksgiving before we even get to December.  So why am I writing about X-mas?  Because this week’s letter over at Ben and Me ’s ABC Blogging is X.  I admit I was stumped.  Yes I could use a word like exciting or exhausted and focus on the x part of the word but I wanted to see if I could actually find a word in the dictionary from the x-section.  Did you know that the x-section is barely two pages? I came across X-mas.  Did you know it was in the dictionary?  I don’t think I’ve really thought about it but I guess it makes sense. Let’s look at the dictionary definition: “n. Christmas.” Ok so X-mas means Christmas according to the dictionary.  It certainly has been widely used in December as a replacement for the word Christmas . I know many people, wonderful Christian people, who refuse to use x-mas and prefer to write out Christmas each and every time. It se...

I did not get this posted yesterday so really it’s Random 5 on Saturday <grin>. 1.   Christmas Eve ~  Our church has two services.  The first is at 10am and is “Royal Hours”.   I love this service.  The hymnography tells the story from Joseph’s perspective.  At the beginning of the service Joseph is troubled.  He wonders why Mary is doing this to him and bringing him dishonor.  By the end of the service Joseph is “convinced that Mary will birth to God.”   It has become a tradition in our church for the Youth to be the choir.   2. Christmas Eve~  We attended the beautiful Vesperal Divine Liturgy of St. Basil which includes many OT readings read by the laity. None of us participated (we got there too late!  Oops!) but Honeybear ended up reading the Epistle that night. The Liturgy was followed by a Lenten potluck.  There were some traditional Holy Supper foods as well as candles on the tables. Very be...

I decided to the follow the advice that a friend gave to someone else: make a list for the letters that you are missing.  So with this post I hope to be on the same letter as Marcy over at Ben and Me. This my Merry Christmas Edition of Alphabet Blogging:   I is for Icon of the Nativity of Christ For information about the icon: the symbolism and theology you can read the Orthodox Wiki article: Nativity Icon J is for baby Jesus in the Manager: The phrase “baby Jesus in the manager” brings two things to mind or rather I hear two things.  I hear the song “Away in the Manager” (which bugs me with the line “no crying he made.”  He was a baby.  He cried.  He was fully human. He did not sin.  Crying is not a sin.  Crying is a human baby means of communicating. Rant over.) and the other is a CCM song.  Casting Crowns?  Third Day?  Oh it’s Third day and the song is “Born in Bethlehem.”  I always hear “baby Jesus lying in a mana...

I do celebrate Christmas.  This isn’t a post about why you shouldn’t celebrate or that Christ wasn’t really born on December 25 or that Christmas is pagan.  Nope.  I spent a few years in the “Christmas-is-pagan-therefore-we-can’t-celebrate-it” camp. That is a whole ‘nother topic for another blog post and not one I want to tackle today. Instead I want to share about my journey from celebrating Christmas to not celebrating Christmas back to celebrating Christmas and what Christmas means for my family. It’s a heart to heart about why we celebrate Christmas and why it’s important to us. I grew up Catholic. (Yes, Roman Catholic. though there are several “ rites” that are in communion with or fall under the Bishop of Rome . The largest is the Roman Rite which is the one that most people think of when they think “catholic”.) We always celebrated Christmas which included attending mass, though we usually did that on Christmas Eve (the 4:30 service though I always wanted to go ...

We are a game loving family and part of our Christmas holiday tradition is playing games during the 12 days of Christmas. Dad takes time off from work and we have lovely days of sitting around munching food and playing games.  We do something similar at Thanksgiving as well. It’s also become a tradition that there is a least one new game under the tree. With Christmas coming up fast [in just a few days!!] I thought I would share a list of games that we love, some of which have been Christmas presents. Wits-n-Wagers Family Edition ~  We reviewed this one crew year and it quickly became a family favorite.  Say Anything Family Edition ~ Like Wits-n-Wagers, this game is from NorthStar Games and we had the privilege of reviewing it for the crew. We can all play this as a family as well but we did have to modify it a bit in order to include Supergirl. 10 Days Games  from Out of the Box: Engaging Games ~  We purchased these years ago, there are several. We ha...

It’s just days until Christmas.  Here’s some things that have happened this week: 1. I played Taxi Driver for most of this week.  It’s finals for my oldest and she didn’t want to hang around all day on campus when she only had one final.  Two of the 4 days that I took her in she only needed to be there for 10 minutes or less!  I’m exhausted from all the driving. 2. Speaking of finals.  One of those less than 10 minute finals (which technically was last Friday) was her “Music Program Entrance Audition.”  As a music student her final is a “jury review.”  She received her letter informing her that she passed and she can now fill out the paperwork to formally declare Music Performance as her major.  I am so proud of her.  3. The majority of my Christmas shopping has been completed online.  I am not done shopping though.  I need to get a bit more done on Saturday but I plan to be done on Saturday!! 4. Yesterday this was delivered: ...

It’s that time of year again; the time of year when some Christians get all up in arms and their undies in a bundle and declare that there is a war on Christmas.  Why?  Because they object to the phrase Happy Holidays. They get mad because the sales clerk, telemarketer, friendly stranger on the street failed to say Merry Christmas and instead wished them well by saying Happy Holidays. I love the phrase Happy Holidays . I don’t mind if you say it to me.  I’ll be happy that you want me to have happy holidays. Notice the plural.  Not a Happy Holiday.  But *holidays*.  More than one.  I do celebrate more than one holiday between November 15 and January 6.  During this season Orthodox Christians will celebrate 3 of the 12 Great Feasts of the year.  THREE.  That means HOLIDAYS.  Plural.  That means more than one.  More than one Christian Holiday: Entrance (or Presentation )of the Theotokos (Nov 21), Nativity of Christ (Dec...

Here were are just under 11 days from Christmas.  I’ve decided to share my short list of wonderful picture books that we made traditional Christmas reading here at my house.  These would all make great Christmas gifts as well as be wonderful to add to your own collection for family traditions. I reviewed Smudge, and the Book of Mistakes: A Christmas Story nearly a year ago. We read it through the Christmas season.  Though this is a Christmas Story, it can be read all year long. This has more text than the other books I’ve listed but not so much text, in my opinion, that you’ll loose preschoolers but enough that even your older students will pick it up to read. Last year during the Twelve Days of Christmas (the time from December 25 through and including January 6) we enjoyed this fun picture book: The Twelve Days of Christmas . We all, adults included, enjoyed the illustrations and finding the poor bird on each page.  And when ever read this book we really can...

Yes, it’s true.  Two Random 5 on Fridays in a row!  (I hope I am setting a good trend for myself!) 1.  Miranda over at The Pebble Pond had let some of us know that she was not going to be continuing to host random 5.  Thankfully she posted this morning saying that this week is NOT the last week.  Yay!  2. Last week (Friday Dec 6!) we celebrated St. Nicholas Day.  On Sunday our church had our annual St. Nicholas party complete with the reading of the story and a visit from St. Nicholas. The girls posed with Godmother Kim and St. Nicholas.   r 3.  Getting the Christmas tree up and decorated was more time consuming than we planned.  We intended to decorate the tree on Sunday.  The girls had assembled the artificial tree.  (Yes artificial.  Though I would love a real tree, my family has this silly idea that breathing is essential and would rather be able to breathe. Tree allergies stink!) But when Daddy and the girls t...

Yes I missed last weekend.  I’ll just blame it on Thanksgiving Weekend.  I um ate too much great food and couldn’t bring myself to have enough energy to type?  Yes that must be it!  Hope you had a great week! 1. Today is the Feast of St. Nicholas.  Most of the traditions I have seen involve children putting out their shoes and St. Nick fills them with treats.  Chocolate Coins are very traditional as they represent the coins that St. Nicholas gave to the sisters for their dowry.  Wonder what I am talking about?  Here’s a couple of links.  This first one from Alex Riggle is quite humorous:  St. Nicholas of Myra .  This second one is far more educational based and is a website with lots of links: St. Nicholas Center . 2.  We don’t do the shoes.  We do stockings hung by the  fire. It just seems to connect more for me with story that we hear every year at church.  St. Nicholas flung a bag of coins through a chimney...

This giveaway has ended. Book Title: The First Christmas Author: Keith Christopher Illustrator: Christine Kornacki Publisher: Ideals Children’s Books Format: Hardcover, 32 pages Price: $16.99 Recommended Ages: Kids ages 4-8 but in my opinion enjoyable for all ages! As soon as I pulled the book out of the packaging, I was in love!  This beautiful, hardcover book, written in rhyme captures the attention of both adult and child. It can be a quick easy read or you can slow down and savor each page. About The First Christmas Night The First Christmas Night is a beautiful retelling of the birth of Jesus on that joyous night in Bethlehem so long ago. The poem begins with the arrival of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem and winds though Christ’s birth, the angels’ appearance to the shepherds, and the visit by the Wise Men.  The simple, yet elegant, verses will appeal to little ones and are accompanied by the rich acrylic illustrations of Christine Kornacki. About the Aut...