Family Christmas Devotional

On the Sunday before Christmas it is our family tradition to have a family devotional.  It is basically a Family Home Evening that we center on the birth of Christ.  I love this tradition as it is intended to help us focus the week of Christmas on the true meaning of the season.  It is my goal to have all my shopping, cards mailed, etc. before this Sunday, so that I can slow down for the rest of the year and reflect on what Christ's birth means to me personally. 

I have kept our baby Jesus in his cardboard box of hay tucked away on my closet shelf all year, so it was a surprise for Gracie when I pulled it out.  She did not remember it. Jace LOVES role playing, and ate up acting out the Christmas story.  We kept it simple last year, so he loved doing the whole thing this year.  He was a shepherd and Joseph. Gracie was an angel and Mary, Ryan was the wise man, and I was the narrator, prop manager- and photographer.



We then had music time and sang Christmas songs from the primary song book.
In my nursery class earlier that day,  I used cotton balls for the song Snow is Falling All Around..and it was such a hit at church that I decided to do it with Jace and Grace that night.  They really loved it. Throwing cotton balls at each other is just fun!

We ended the evening with a gift exchange.  I did the shopping this year and decided that as a family we would all give each other Nerf dart guns!! 

We stayed up for another hour or so shooting the daylights out of each other leaving little red welts on each other's skin from the darts.

It was a BLAST!!! I was worried that Gracie would hate it, but I found her a little gun and she went crazy chasing Ryan.

So that is how we ended our spiritual family devotional!  It was our best one yet!