O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

I finally made a Henry family advent wreath. Unfortunately for me, I decided to finally do it in Thailand where things like Advent wreaths are very hard to come by...but none-the-less, I was able to find some things to make it work. Last year, before coming to Thailand I went to a homeschooling conference in Florida with five of the sweetest women I know (You know who you are...minus one, my dear friend Carrie). At any rate, I found this book entitled "The Advent Book." I bought it and it has now become a family tradition. Last year was our first Christmas in Thailand and our first Christmas to uncover the wonder of "The Advent Book" and the beautifully illustrated pages telling the Christmas story.
I also bought a small booklet entitled "The Jesse Tree" thanks to my sister-in-law who told me about it. This year we added "The Jesse Tree" book to our nightly reading/activity as well. It has been so neat to retrace the steps of redemptive history of God's wonderful promise of a Messiah...Jesus Christ, incarnate! To the left is a picture of PJ with the first day of "The Jesse Tree." It's a tree stump with shoots coming off of it taken from Isaiah 11:1-2. It reads, "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. Adnt eh Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord." Of course, this shoot is Jesus Christ. Jesse was the father of King David and from whom Jesus' earthly lineage is traced. What a wonderful history we have, for those of us who believe and what a wonderful future we have knowing that this babe who came so long ago not only LIVES today but will REIGN in power and in glory in the future! The thought has been recurring to me this Christmas (and I think it's because PJ is older and able to understand a bit more this year) that we can't just stop at baby Jesus in the manger...we MUST remember the life, death and RESURRECTION of Christ...for in the resurrection is the POWER of Christ and His conquering death.
So, this Christmas we bought a larger tree than the one we had last year and I have made our small little three foot tree into the Jesse tree in which every night we hang our Jesse Tree paper ornaments. I have put some red bows and white lights on it just to make it a little more pretty. On this table we also have PJ's Play Mobile Nativity set (thanks again to Aunt Becky and Uncle Matt). PJ loves playing with it and just today we had Emmy Mills over for a few hours and they spent most of the time playing with this set.


To the left is the Play Mobile Nativity set along with Lighting McQueen (from the movie Cars). An ironic picture, I know, but that's PJ for you. =)