Family Posadas and more
We’ve had a fun couple of days this week preparing our homes and hearts for Jesus’ birthday.
Yesterday we made popcorn/cranberry garland. Anything that incorporates snack time, math, and fine motor skills is bound to be a hit, right? Gianna started eating the popcorn from the tree so we had to move it out of her reach… Our tree is becoming a little top heavy these days.
Today our Goddaughter, Miss Lindsey, came over for a visit bearing gifts–the greatest of which was her own presence.
Her favorite past time is loading up kids with sugar and then leaving…so she helped us make our gingerbread house. 
It’s truly evil that Wonka puts a pound of candy into their gingerbread house kit…but they obviously know that most of it will be eaten before it makes it on the house. But it’s probably more evil that Costco put these on sale at an irresistible price that I couldn’t pass up.
Finally this evening we had our Family Posadas. It ended up being just us, which was a fun trial run for next year when we’ll invite more people over. I only know of a couple of parishes in Austin that actually do Las Posadas. Ours is not one of them. I came across a guide to do it as family in your home. So we did it all in one night and instead of traveling from house to house I took the kids from room to room. I whipped out some of our All Saints Day costumes from years past and here we have Mary and Joseph:
Adam played (read the part of) the Inn Keepers.
And afterwards we read the book The Christmas Pageant which tells the nativity story complete with music that Adam played on the piano.
Afterward we feasted on a traditional Mexican dinner complete with tamales and pan dulce (sweet bread). Hopefully next year we can share in the blessing of this day!