On the Seventh Day of Christmas

The Zoomlians give to you: the latest 12 Days of Christmas!

On the Sixth Day of Christmas

The Zoomlians give to you: The Bethlehemian Rhapsody!

On the Fifth Day of Christmas

The Zoomlians give to you: A Masterpiece!

On the Fourth Day of Christmas

The Zoomlians give to you: Singing Hedgehogs!

On the Third Day of Christmas

I Saw Three Ships, and the Zoomlians wanted to give them to you!

On the Second Day of Christmas

The Zoomlians give to you: The Lego Christmas Story!

On the First Day of Christmas

The Zoomlians give to you: Christmas greetings!

Poem of the Week: The House of Christmas

The House of Christmas

by GK Chesterton (1874–1936)

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

HT: Journey with Jesus

Poem of the Week: Nativity

Nativity

By John Donne

 

Immensity, cloistered in thy dear womb,

Now leaves his well-beloved imprisonment,

There he hath made himself to his intent

Weak enough, now into our world to come;

But Oh, for thee, for him, hath th' inn no room?

Yet lay him in this stall, and from the Orient,

Stars, and wise men will travel to prevent

Th' effect of Herod's jealous general doom;

See'st thou, my Soul, with thy faith's eyes, how he

Which fills all place, yet none holds him, doth lie?

Was not his pity towards thee wondrous high,

That would have need to be pitied by thee?

Kiss him, and with him into Egypt go,

With his kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

 

HT: Hymns and Carols of Christmas

Poem of the Week: More Advent

The Wicked Fairy at the Manger

My gift for the child:
No wife, kids, home;
No money sense. Unemployable.
Friends, yes. But the wrong sort -
The workshy, women, wogs,
Petty infringers of the law, persons
With notifiable diseases,
Poll tax collectors, tarts;
The bottom rung.

........His end?
I think we'll make it
Public, prolonged, painful.

Right, said the baby. That was roughly
What we had in mind.

U. A. Fanthorpe ('Christmas Poems - BC:AD', Peterloo Poets) 

HT: ReSource

7 Complicated Advent Preps

So, it's farewell to The Glorious Turkey and all the gourds and pumpkins, and hello to all the Advent stuff!

The thing to keep in mind is that we have now been doing the Advent thing with kids for 20 years.  In the beginning, I was looking for Advent stuff to do that would be meaningful, helpful, and fun.


Now we have the weight of Tradition, as well as the "need" to have 6 small things to do each day so each kid can do an Advent thing each day. Also, I've done it so long, it's easy for me.

Do what I did: if it looks like fun, and not too much work, try it.  If it doesn't, smile and nod.

This is what it looks like for us.


Kid 1: Open a door on the Advent House.  Inside, there are 6 pieces of candy, and a Playmobil Advent piece to put in the stable.

Yeah, the sheep is in the attic.  The kid decides where to put it.





Kid 2: Find and place the Jesse Tree ornament while I read the scripture passages.

You can find all sorts of sources for Jesse Tree scripture and ornaments.  My set are from an ornament swap organized years ago by my friend Jolene - this means I have a set of cool and creative ornaments while only having had to come up with one good idea.

As they've broken or gotten lost, we've been replacing them with shrinky dinks.  Not as cool, but doable.




Kid 3: Opens the day's flap on the paper calendar.

I thought we would reuse last year's 3D calendar, pictured here on the fish tank, but, at the last minute, they decided to go with a round one I had on hand.


Kid 4: Lights and blows out the Advent candles and does the felt calendar.

Back in the day, it was just blowing out the candles, you know, before we trusted the kids with producing fire!




Kid 5: Chooses a book to unwrap.

We have way to many Advent and Christmas books, so I just wrap 25 of our favorites in tissue paper.  The rest are loose in the other box.

Most are religious, but some are secular, and you never quite know what you are picking!

I've found it's a good way to make sure we actually get to all of them.  As an extra bonus, it's good training for how to politely receive and unwrap gifts, as well as what to do with the paper afterwards...
Kid 6: Chooses and places an ornament.

This is one of the favorite Advent tasks!

They aren't tree ornaments, they are decorations.  It's a lovely, no stress way to decorate, and I love it that the house gets slowly more decorated as Advent goes on!



Kid 7: Well, there is no 7 to do another task, but we all do little acts of love and kindness to soften our hearts for Baby Jesus' arrival.

That's our crib (next to Love, our parakeet!), and we put a piece of hay in every time we pray, sacrifice, or make  little act of love.

Extra bonus: If you don't have time for a complicated Advent, here's yesterday's Easy Advent Prep:
A Christmas Kit

More Advent stuff with Kelly and the Quick Takers (sounds like a band...).

One Easy Advent Prep

When I was up in NJ, visiting my folks and my sister, we went through some boxes in the attic, and one of the delightful things we found was an old photocopy of something called A Christmas Kit.

It's a lovely, very simple way to prepare your heart for Christmas by "building a crib" for Baby Jesus there.  That might sound sentimental, but it's actually both lovely and practical.  It's only about three sentences each day, which for me makes it extra practical!  I was trying to figure out a way to put it on the blog, and I was delighted to find that it already exists in many places on the internet.

So here's a little Advent present for you, all wrapped up as a PDF!

A Christmas Kit, by Fr. Vidal Banazek, OFM Cap.

Wordless Wednesday: The Walters

Kids' Choice Adventure

We were scheduled to go to the American History Museum, but Oob really really wanted to go to Natural History.  No sooner had he suggested it, than Zorg mentioned he really wanted to go to National Gallery.

Why not both?  The two museums are a block apart!

It turned out what Oob really wanted was to see the butterfly exhibit.



That turned out to be fun for everyone!

Beautiful and sketch worthy...

We also spent time in the insect zoo with a very enthusiastic docent who wanted us  handle lots of bugs!

 Then, on the way out, a new narwhal exhibit caught my eye.

Narwhals are one of those strange animals that I didn't know too much about.

Now I know that they are even stranger than I thought!

Did you ever notice that their tusk isn't in the middle?

 Then it was on to National Gallery.

Coincidentally, I had been there the previous weekend with Mxyl (who now takes me to museums!😍).

For one thing, this fountain had no plants 3 days ago!





For another, there wasn't a long line to get into the (swoon worthy) Vermeer exhibit.  It was an exhibit of Vermeer and similar painters of his time, so the paintings were in groups by theme.

It was fascinating to see how several different artists from the same time and place painted say, a woman reading a letter.  I walked away with a better grasp of what make Vermeer so ... sublime?

To me there is a purity and peace in his paintings that makes them transcendent.  The more I look at his paintings, the more I feel drawn in to them in an almost religious way: it's an experience of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

The other paintings were lovely, too, but they weren't Vermeers.  In some ways not even all Vermeers are like that for me, but the best of them really are.

And we visited a few more favorites and all decided we would like to come again.

But this week, Choclo told me he wanted to go see the "ancient stuff", which means The Walters and their collection of Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities.

I love living where I do and being able to take my kids to see so much amazing stuff!

Even better is the kids figuring out for themselves what they want to go see more of!

Poem of the Week: Christ the King

Advent Lyrics (Christ I)

(Translated from Anglo-Saxon)

Hail Almighty Christ,
peaceable and true King of All Kings!

Before every majesty
of the entire world
you were conceived
becoming a child
with your Glory-Father
by his craft and his might!

There is now no nobleman
under the windy sky,
no perspicacious man,

surpassingly wise
that he can speak of this
to sea-dwelling men,

or righteously relate
how the Holder of Heaven
in the beginning

hatched you
as his free-born son.

Of the many things
that the kindred of men
have frained among the folk,
what first happened
under the heavens
at the start of the world,

was that Wise God,
the Starting-Point of Life,
divided divinely
light and shadow,
and the power of judgment was his,

and the Lord of Hosts
ordained this subtle thing:
“Let there become
light from now, evermore
until the end of the world,

a sparkling joy
to all that live
which will be born
in their generation.”
And it happened at once,
when it should be so—

illuminated rays
the tribes of men,
brilliant among the stars,
after the arrival
of the proper time.
He established himself

that you were his Son
dwelling at the same instant
with your Solitary Lord
before any of this
even happened.

You are the wisdom
which created everything
of this spacious creation,
along with the Sovereign.

Therefore there is no one
so quick-witted,
nor so mind-crafty
that can clearly affirm
your inception
to the children of men.

Come now,
Warden of Victories,
Measurer of Mankind,
fixed in grace
reveal to us here
your mercy!

There is in all of us
a great desire to be allowed
to understand
your mother’s kindred,
the righteous mystery,
since we cannot at all
explain any farther
your father’s descent.

Make joyous this middle-earth
mildly through your
coming here, Savior Christ—
command those golden gates
to be opened wide,

which have in days of old,
for a very long time,
stood closed fast,
Highest Lord of Heaven—
and seek us out
through your own arrival
humbly to the earth.

There is need of your mercies!
The cursed wolf,
the beast of death’s shadow,
has brought your flock,
O Lord, to naught,
scattering them widely.

The sheep, my Sovereign,
you bought before
with your blood
which the baleful foe
woefully afflicts,
and takes them captive
for himself,
over the urging
of our desires.

Therefore we, Savior,
entreat you earnestly
with our breasts’ thoughts
that you quickly render us
assistance, weary wretches,

so that the tormenting slayer
may tumble into abjection
to the depths of hell,
and the work of your hands,
Shaper of Heroes,
may arise and arrive

at the right,
into that upward
and noble kingdom,
whence the dark ghast
drew us apart and seduced us
through our sinful lust,

so that we, lacking glory,
must suffer misery
forever without end,
unless you,

Eternal Lord, the Living God,
Helmet of All Creatures,
wish to defend us
more readily,
from the destroyer of peoples. (214-74)

HT: Dr. Aaron K. Hostetter

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes, I know I have my eyes closed, but it was a good picture of our entire family with good lighting and a nice background.  It's only embarrassing because I was the one taking the photo.  Which makes me the world's worst selfie taker.

Wordless Wednesday: Roosevelt Island Fall

Poem of the Week: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

By Edgar Albert Guest

Gettin’ together to smile an’ rejoice,

Eucharist literally means Thanksgiving

An’ eatin’ an’ laughin’ with folks of your choice;

An’ kissin’ the girls an’ declarin’ that they

Are growin’ more beautiful day after day;

Chattin’ an’ braggin’ a bit with the men,

Buildin’ the old family circle again;

Livin’ the wholesome an’ old-fashioned cheer,

Just for awhile at the end of the year.

Greetings fly fast as we crowd through the door

And under the old roof we gather once more

Just as we did when the youngsters were small;

Mother’s a little bit grayer, that’s all.

Father’s a little bit older, but still

Ready to romp an’ to laugh with a will.

Here we are back at the table again

Tellin’ our stories as women an’ men.

Bowed are our heads for a moment in prayer;

Oh, but we’re grateful an’ glad to be there.

Home from the east land an’ home from the west,

Home with the folks that are dearest an’ best.

Out of the sham of the cities afar

We’ve come for a time to be just what we are.

Here we can talk of ourselves an’ be frank,

Forgettin’ position an’ station an’ rank.

Give me the end of the year an’ its fun

When most of the plannin’ an’ toilin’ is done;

Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,

Let me sit down with the ones I love best,

Hear the old voices still ringin’ with song,

See the old faces unblemished by wrong,

See the old table with all of its chairs

An’ I’ll put soul in my Thanksgivin’ prayers.

HT: Poetry Foundation

Awesome American History: 1912-1919

This covered Harry Houdini, The Great Molasses Flood, and World War I.  In a lovely coincidence, this meant that we were covering WWI during Veteran's Day!  It was pages 215-224 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

For WWI, we did a poppy picture as our art project.  We talked about why poppies came to represent the fallen soldiers of WWI, and I read In Flanders Fields to them.

When I was a child, living on an Army base, WWI veterans used to sell paper poppies around Veteran's Day.  I called up my Dad to ask if I was remembering correctly - he and my mom always bought at least one and put it on the car viser.

Yes, indeed! The WWI veterans are gone now, but up in NJ, WWII (and later) veterans still sell poppies around Veteran's Day!

 For our active activity, we favored Harry Houdini by tying all the kids up and throwing them in the closet to see if they could escape.

Then all the moms had a nice quiet chat over coffee while eating all the kids' snacks.

Well, that was my idea, anyway.  What we actually did was all try to escape bamboo finger traps, which was almost as fun.

 And Klenda made molasses ginger cookies for our snack, referencing the Great Molasses Flood.  Yum!

Wordless Wednesday: Harvest Bazaar