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Vacation

We're on vacation.  You know the kind - the whirlwind type vacation where you come home needing a vacation?  We are in California visiting with my wonderful family.  We have been seeing A LOT of friends and family while attempting to maintain some sort of sleep and eating schedules for two young boys.  Thus, the idea of blogging or even keeping up with any sort of organized preschool type activities has been put on hold.

We were able to still finish week three of our Advent wreath before our trip to California.  I hope that we will be able to actually get through all of it next year since we'll be able to focus more easily on our new family traditions in our own home.  We did get to finish going through our advent calendar, but we didn't do any crafts.  There is just too much going on here to try to add something else to the mix.  Instead, we've had a lot of fun playing with duplos and trains at Grandma and Papa's house.

One thing I really enjoyed about doing Advent as much as we did this year was just how much we focused this season on Christ.  Papa read the Nativity story on Christmas morning before opening presents.  Since Little Buddy hasn't experienced a lot of Christmases before, he didn't expect to jump right in and start opening gifts.  He really seemed to understand that it was Jesus' birthday (even though he shares the same one).  We purposefully left most of his Christmas gifts at home since we didn't want to travel with him.  He didn't get a lot of gifts here, and he was really fine with that.  However, I'm sure he'll be excited when we surprise him with more presents at home.

We also didn't make a big deal about Santa Claus as it's not a big tradition in our family.  Little Buddy really only learned about him by looking at Christmas decortions at other people's houses and stores.  Next year, though, I think it would be fun to talk more about St. Nicholas and why he is the patron saint of Christmas.

If you are interested in reading more about our family and Christmas time, you can enjoy that on our family blog.

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