Advent Calendar for a Preschooler: Week 4, Week 3 update

As we added the pink love candle last week, I was thankful again for Brian bringing the tradition of having an advent log into our home.  We only ever lit candles at church when I was growing up, but we now light them each night as a family at dinner (well, most nights).  It really helps the boys to discuss the different candles (peace, hope, and love so far), and come up with questions they want answered.
Since we got most everything we needed to do done last week, these last few days will just be full of packing, waiting and traveling, as we head back to Indiana for a fun week of seeing family.  I don't think I've ever been so far ahead, and love not having too many last minute things to do.

I'm not making an official calendar for this week, as I know we'll be traveling and fitting in our activities around all our families' plans.  We had our church party on Sunday,  and the last things on our advent to-do-list include: decorating gingerbread houses, seeing the lights in Marion, and watching the Polar Express while driving to Indiana.  

Week 3 Update:
Christmas Pageant:  We started the week with a beautiful Christmas program at church.  Theo made us proud as he quietly, and somberly acted as the third wise man.  Normally, he speeds down the aisles at church, so seeing him march so slowly was amazing.

Dale City Nativity:  On our way home from a party of Brian's colleague up in Maryland, we decided to go ahead and stop at the living nativity that ran for two nights.  We did have to wait in line for a while, but we enjoyed the beautiful scenes again this year.  Here's the link to the experience from last year.

Cookies:  I went a little overboard this year... I think the fact that I have counted calories or done weight watchers for the majority of the year finally caught up to me and I just really wanted to bake.  We did snickerdoodles, Mexican wedding cakes, gingerbread boys and girls, Brian's great grandma's recipes for molasses and sugar cookies (best ever), almond sweets (a new favorite), peanut butter munchies, and oatmeal jumbos.  I learned all about flow icing at a class at the library, and got to experiment with that quite a bit.  We gave a lot of cookies away, froze some, and shared them at several holiday parties.

Parade of the Magi:  Theodore was a wise man for the second time this season, at his pre-school's annual Christmas play.  They parade into the sanctuaury, present their gifts of food to baby Jesus, and then sing songs.  He seems to have his father's singing abilities, but hopefully he'll improve with some more time.  He did keep up with the choreography pretty well.  I'm thankfully he is always the tallest in his class so that he's always first in line and in the back row.  Makes photos a little easier.

DC Train Tour:  I did a separate post for this, see here if you missed it.

To catch our other advent calendars, by week, check here:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3