We've been winter cleaning...

The last few weeks of weather have been very interesting. We had a week of snow, followed by a week of rain and have recently been buried in snow once more. Church was cancelled today for the second time in the last 3 weeks on account of how slick and snowy things are. Here is the latest photo of the view from our apartment:

To keep ourselves busy on days that we have been snowed in, we have all been cleaning and organizing. Atticus is quick to help and will grab the broom as soon as he sees us start tidying up. 

Here he is sweeping under the couch and then trying to sweep up his toys and doodles from the coffee table:

We finished making our special Christmas Advent Calendar in time to begin our countdown on December 1st. It is a Christmas Tree with 24 ornaments on it, one for each day, each with a scripture about the life of Christ. To begin, all the ornaments are turned away and each evening we read the daily scripture and get to turn the ornament over to the decorated side; the tree will be fully decorated in time for Christmas morning. We have really been enjoying the extra focus on Christ. The scriptures begin at the end of Christ's life and then work their way backwards to the birth of Christ, so that one can begin to better understand the full measure of that humble birth.

(Of course, we cannot take credit for this idea, someone very creative came up with it and created a pdf pattern on Etsy; you can check it out here.)

Jason tying the string on to the ornaments.

Beginning the countdown.

Beginning the countdown.

And our Christmas tree is up! We were a little worried about how curious Atticus would be about the Christmas tree since it is his first Christmas being mobile, but he has done fairly well so far. Although, he is quite eager to plug the Christmas tree in every time that he sees the lights are out. And we still need to go on the hunt for this year's Christmas decoration.

We have also been leisurely working on our yearly gingerbread house, nearly done now. We are just enjoying the Christmas season and time together as a family - doing our best not to let it rush by.

Love and miss you all.

-The Clog Crew