Advent- week 2

This week was a much slower paced one, what with our assorted cooties and an unexpected car repair that left the kids and I stranded at the public library and required a two day juggling act back and forth to the car dealership.

We did manage to put up our nativity scene....


Our nativity scene is an odd mix of two sets. I got the white porcelain set from a flea market before Maria was born. The very breakable pieces have seen better days. Many have tell tale fracture lines where they have been superglued back together. They are being replaced at the rate of one or two a year by a much more durable (and expensive) Fontanini set. I started with the Holy Family, and then moved on to replacing the saddest looking pieces first. This year I bought the sheep.

They were a welcome addition, as a couple of our previous sheep had lost most of their legs altogether and required some serious propping up.

The other missed activities have been shifted to next week or dropped until next year. I did really want to have a celebration dinner for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, as well as take Maria to the midnight mass at a nearby parish, but that was the day of the aforementioned car breakdown....so we just read this book instead.

We also helped package and deliver baskets of food for our parish food bank this morning. It was a good experience for the kids. It's very easy to donate food to the food pantry...it's another experience altogether to go out to people's homes to deliver the food. The whole thing only took about an hour and a half out of our morning, and it made me appreciate those that spend all year working for this ministry.