Archive for December, 2011

This Week’s Happenings 11/28-12/4

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

We had a pretty uneventful week, but a wonderful weekend.  This week we put up and decorated our Christmas tree.  It was a little weird decorating for Christmas in shorts and a t-shirt, but oh well!  The only thing missing now is a star or something on the top.  I think Mikayla and I will make it this week.   We also introduced Mikayla to the advent season by making a wreath and talking about it.

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We also had the staff Christmas party this week.  It was more of a service and then cake and refreshments afterwards, but fun.  Part of the service was each of the staff got up to put a star ornament on the tree.  After putting on their ornament they were supposed to say what they were thankful for from the past year.  Mikayla of course had to put an ornament on the tree.  The thing she said she was thankful for was presents!  Classic two year old moment.

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Sr. Diane and Thandiwe (pronounced Tan-dee-way) at the Christmas party

We discovered this week that we probably tell Mikayla she is cute too much.  Our friend Joey was over for dinner and Mikayla was up walking around playing by herself.  All the sudden she looks at Joey and says, "I’m cute, people tell me that all the time"!  Hilarious.

On Saturday we packed up and headed into town for the weekend.  We started the day by doing some quick Christmas shopping and I am excited to say that we are almost completely finished!  Just a couple of small things and we will be done.  That evening we had some very gracious hosts – Peter, Callista and Aviva.  Peter works with the Embassy and does some work with Cabrini and Callista works for the World Bank.  Aviva is their one year old daughter.  On Saturday night we had a wonderful braai, watched the children play and just hung out.  It was great family time. 

On Sunday morning we woke up and headed to Malolotja Nature Reserve.  It was completely different than any scenery we see in St. Phillips.  Mountains, valleys, trees, rocks…absolutely beautiful…even if it was overcast and cold!  Of course we were not prepared for the cold weather and forgot to bring jackets, Ben even forgot pants.  Aviva was nice enough to loan Mikayla a sweatshirt and I used her blanket as mine.  Ben just toughed it out!  Our car took a little bit of a beating, we did a little mudding, but I think everyone enjoyed themselves.   We hope to go back when it is clearer (and we are better prepared) and do some hiking.  They also have a zip line canopy tour we would like to do at some point.

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Random flower we saw while walking around

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Toddler Friendly Advent Wreath

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Last year we didn’t do much with the advent season because Mikayla wasn’t quite ready yet.  This year though, I knew I at least wanted to introduce her to the season.  So, we set out to make a toddler friendly advent wreath.  by toddler friendly, I mean one that doesn’t have real flames.  Mikayla does pretty good around flames and candles, considering we use them often due to all our power outages, but we still wanted to be better safe than sorry!  This wreath took maybe ten minutes to put together and looks pretty good if I do say so myself!

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To make you will need:

  1. Paper plate
  2. Construction paper (green, pink, purple and orange)
  3. Glue (we used white glue and it worked great)
  4. 4-5 empty toilet paper tubes

We started by wrapping the toilet paper tubes in construction paper (one pink and three purple).  I think we will use a real candle in the center for the white candle, but if not I can wrap a paper towel tube in white like the others so it will be a little taller.  Next trace your toddlers hand several times on green paper.  I actually traced three times and then folded paper so I was cutting multiple hands out at a time.  I think we ended up using 12 hands.  After cutting a hole in the center of the paper plate (if using fake candle in the center you may want to leave this as is so you can glue on top), glue cut out hands around edge of plate, overlapping if you choose.  The plate was looking kind of bare in the middle so we took our scraps of green, tore up and glued in the middle.  The next step is to glue the candles in the center of the plate.  Finally, make four flames out of orange paper to glue on the candles as you discuss their meaning. 

Easy, toddler friendly and it looks nice (if I do say so myself)!  Now we just need to work on a toddler friendly discussion of the meaning for advent.  Any suggestions?

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