Jesus' Birthday

With the commercialism surrounding it, it's almost impossible to keep focused on the real reason we celebrate Christmas. If it's hard for us as adults, it's only that much harder for children. We really tried hard during the Christmas season to prepare the kids Jesus' birthday. We were celebrating with the Daspit side this year and decided to open gifts on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day was reserved for a birthday party for Jesus. We had a lot planned to try to make it special. Here are a few of the highlights.

Unfortunately, with the craziness of the day, we totally forgot to do one of the things we felt was most important (talk about losing perspective, right). Our plan was to let the kids look at the World Vision Gift Catalog and pick out a 'gift' that they wanted to send to someone in another country. If you've never seen one, it is a great way to given meaningful gifts. They range from a little as $17 for a couple of ducks to hundreds for a bull or cow. Of course, if someone wanted to go real big, they could pay for a well to be dug. Although we didn't do it on Christmas day, we did let the kids pick later on. They chose to buy 5 ducks for someone so that they could have eggs to eat or sell. Orin seemed to really get into it and had a hard time picking. On a side note, each Christmas at Orin's school the teachers collect change to buy books for children in a foreign country. This year they donated wordless picture Bibles to children in Russia. For the last month or so we've given Orin a few chores to do around the house and he gets about 25cents a week to put in his piggy (actually it's a doggy) bank. He does things like put away the silverware and help me make his bed. If you know of any other good 'chores' for a three year old, please let me know! Anyway, we talked to him about it, and he decided to give some of his some of his money. He dumped everything out of the doggy bank and chose about half of the coins to give for the books. I was very proud of him.

Aunt Crystal had a great idea for making snowmen with donuts and other goodies. It was a hit with all of the kids and a very healthy breakfast too!

Although we had opened presents the night before, we saved the stocking for Jesus' birthday.


Sweet Caiah sharing some of his candy with mommy.

Snowmen crafts - they came out really cute.

Can't have a birthday party without a pinata, right?

Our last craft was to make a manger and place a baby Jesus in it.

Finally, we had a cake, with candles. Here is a video of us singing Happy Birthday to Jesus.