Jesse Tree Advent Ornaments

I love Christmas and we like to start the celebrating, decorating early in the Fowler household.

One of my favorite traditions with the boys is a the Jesse Tree. Now I had never heard of this until about 5 years ago. It was mentioned on a parenting forum I am on and it has become a favorite around here.

A Jesse Tree represents the family tree of Jesus and tells the story of salvation from Creation in Genesis through the Old Testament until the coming of the baby Jesus. It is a beautiful way for us to focus during the holiday season on the true meaning of Christmas.

We use this book of devotionals The Advent Jesse Tree . I like it because they are written for both adults and children, there are hymn options and scripture readings. It has 25 devotions so we do one every day during December.

After we read the devotional the boys take turns adding an ornament that represents the scripture to the tree. When we first started this someone on the parenting board suggested that we do a swap for the ornaments. We each agreed to do a certain ornament (or two) and then we made 25 of the same ornament. We sent them to one person and they sorted them and then we got back a box of 25 different ornaments. It was lovely to see the different ornaments that everyone made and how creative they were. It makes a lovely addition to our tree every year and there are a few favorites.

So what are your favorite holiday traditions. What do your kids look forward too? Do you do a Jesse Tree or some similar Advent tradition? I am hoping to share some other neat traditions in the days to come.

This week I will upload photos of our Jesse Tree ornaments for a new swap I am hosting. Come back and take a look.

We have a bouncing baby CHURCH!

Yesterday we grand opened Church @ Skyline Valley. I will be posting photos in a few days, when I get some from the missions team that was here. (I will admit I was going crazy and did not even remember to get my camera out.)

We have an unofficial count of 125 in attendance. We had a missions team from Central Baptist Church and In His Steps Church in Arkansas helping this weekend. They passed out flyers on Saturday and then helped us host a block party. Sunday morning they were on the front lines, helping with set up/tear down, greeting, and working with the children. We could not have pulled this off with out this mission team. They were such a blessing. We had 23 in our children's programs yesterday so I have a feeling we are going to be busting at the seams soon next week.

I am amazed that over three years ago we were in Copperas Cove meeting with a group of pastors that had a heart to start a church here. I don't understand God's plan. I am humbled that God allows me to be a part of that plan. I can't wait to see what happens in the days ahead.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, M&Ms and Science?

I enjoy homeschooling. Then there are days when it is just so much fun that I can't imagine doing anything else. We had a small break while family was visiting (and I need to post those pictures too) so this week we really had to get back to "real" schoolwork.

But several months ago I found this fun activity to do using the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle. Since Will loves that book I printed out and laminated the sheets for the activity but we never got around to doing it. This week I bought the M&Ms and gave the boys the sheets and they loved it (chocolate, what's not to love?).

They had one sheet that they laid the M&Ms on by color. Then the older boys had another sheet that they used to tally the number of M&Ms by color. Then the best part...they got to eat them. I think I won a cool mom teacher award to for this little science classification project.

Josiah James

Grief comes in many stages and long after you think you are done grieving you will fill the tears rush to your eyes and the hand constrict your heart as you remember.

I have posted previously about what I gained and lost when we gave birth to Josiah. This week I was reminded that even 11 years after the fact that my soul still grieves.

In the days, weeks and months that passed after we lost Josiah, grief literally flooded my soul much like a tidal wave. It would wash over me until there was nothing left. Even though my faith in God remained there was little to my spiritual life. I had no emotional energy it was like the grief had washed all the excess out to sea and it left me very raw and even barren.

As time passed the grief would still come but it seemed a little less in a way. Then last year as I dealt with some issues in my life it felt like the tidal wave was back again. It left me raw and emotionally barren. This year I have noticed that the grief still comes but it is a little softer. There is less rawness and more longing. Maybe that isn’t exactly right, I am still raw. I still deal with emotions that ride underneath the surface of my life. It seems I am more sensitive to certain things and more callous to others. But the under current isn’t rawness it is longing.

I long for the day when my family will be complete. I long for the day when I will finally after all these years get to hold and rock my baby. I long to see his face and know him. I long to see him perfected and whole not to erase the memories of his imperfection but to know he is finally complete.

Yearly photos

Since we homeschool and don't have school photos taken every year and I found that I couldn't get the boys to a photo place regularly, I started have my mil take pictures of the boys. (She does a professional job and works for cute smiles!)


W, don't let the smile fool you, he is a stinker.


J starting K this year.


E is doing 2nd grade work this year.


G in 4th grade. This will be his fifth year homeschooling.

Grocery Spending Challenge

I found this challenge listed on another blog and decided that this would be a good challenge for me to do. I am planning to keep the amount at $75 a week for everything we would normally buy with cash. This doesn't include gas because we use a refillable gift card for that. But I am including anything else we do groceries, toiletries, eating out, Sonic runs, all the rest.

This week was interesting. I went to Walmart on Monday and bought groceries. I decided to use this month to eat out of our pantry and freezer so my spending is a lot less than normal.

Tuesday Tim needed something from Sam's so we all went and we fed the boys lunch there. On the way he stopped at the Christian bookstore and found a book that he needed for church so that was an extra expense. On the way home we stopped at another Christian bookstore to pick up some things for the church and he also bought the boys a new dvd.

Thursday I had to return some things to Hobby Lobby and I ended up finding a Christmas present for family on sale so I picked it up but it was less than my return.

I sent Tim to Sonic one day for diet dr. pepper and he took the boys so that was an added expense and he also had a meeting one day at Burger King so he bought drinks that day also

Here is the breakdown for the week...

Walmart $26.71
Sam's $15.96
Hobby Lobby $14.51
Lifeway $15.43
Walmart $ 8.56
Family $17.30
Sonic $ 5.00
Burger King $ 2.00

total spent was 105.47 but the return to Hobby Lobby brings it down to 90.33. We were over by 15.33

If we hadn't taken t.he boys with us on the trip to Sam's then we would have been easily under the $75.

At the end of the week, I am out of coffee creamer, we are out of milk for cereal and all snack foods. I still have quite a bit of food in the freezer we can use and our pantry isn't in terrible shape. We still have apples and oranges but I imagine those will be gone by tomorrow. So we have pretty much gone through all the fresh stuff that I bought this week.

I am trying to decide if I can wait until Tuesday to go to the grocery store. I hate to go on a holiday because it will be crowded.

Our first week of school...

completed! We finished our first week of school and it was a good week.

We learned about maps and globes this week. We are using a combination of MFW Kindergarten and Exploring Countries and Cultures and just for fun we are throwing in books from Winterpromise Children Around the World and Animal Worlds.

This was J's first week of school and he was a champ. We spent this week doing assessments and reviewing different skills. The first two weeks of My Father's World K studies the story of Creation so that is what we focused on in our Bible time. We learned what God made on the first four days of Creation.

For language arts, J started using Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. I have used this with both G and E and love the systematic approach to reading and phonics. J learned the first four lines in the "The Five Vowels" this week

A is the first vowel we will say.
/a/ is the short-vowel sound of a.
E is the next vowel, don't you see?
/e/ is the short-vowel sound of e.
I is the third vowel that goes by.
/i/ is the short-vowel sound of i.
O is the fourth vowel that I know.
/o/ is the short-vowel sound of o.

For ECC we all read There's a Map in My Lap, People, Maps and Mapping, Geography A to Z and Maps and Globes. G and E both made vocabulary cards using the map and geography books and they copied different writing styles from the book People. These will go in a lapbook that we are going to make next week about our intro to geography.

Today we did a fun experiment with an orange to see why it is hard to make a flat map of the earth.


Drawing the continents on an orange.


Trying to make the orange peel a "flat" map.


Snack time.


A car wash to end the week.