A Morning in Bethlehem

These are Sawyer's favorite slippers. He calls them his 'dinosaur feet'. He always tries to con me into letting him wear them out in public instead of wearing shoes.

Most weekend mornings I'll come out of my room to find him sprawled out on the couch in this outfit. 'Underwears and dinosaur feet'. Last Saturday morning, I made him cover up his perfect ensambel because we were headed off to 'A Morning in Bethlehem' at church and it was like a mini blizzard outside! The wind was so unbelievably strong and just cold as cold could be!

This was the first year that our church has put on this morning event for the kids where they can walk through all these different areas of the the church that were made to look like Bethlehem, do craft projects, see a live nativity ect. At the very start they were given a large envelope with a felt manger scene and every room that they went to they were given one of the felt pieces to fill up the scene! Each room that we stopped in, we were able to make some sort of Christmas ornament that symbolized a portion of the story. Here in the angel room, Bill helped Sawyer pound down his clay to make a star.

We were stopped by the wise men who were looking for directions to the baby Jesus.

In the wise men room, Sawyer ground a bunch of different spices together that were then poured into a little cloth bag to be hung on the tree!

The shepards were also on their way to find baby Jesus....

In the shepard room we made angels to remind us of how God can use all kinds of people to spread his good news.

One of the longer group activities was a birthday party for Jesus that was hosted by the shepards! We all sat at round tables as the shepards took us back to that amazing night when the angels appeared to them and spoke of the birth of our savior. We each had a cake that we decorated with different items such as an angel, a star, an evergreen branch and candles. One of the little boys at our table kept pointing to the shepards and saying, "Mommy, look at all those pirates!" :)

After gobbling down some cake, we headed to the chapel to finally see the baby Jesus in the stable. Mary and Joseph were there along with the baby Jesus that really looked the part except for his little Gap socks that would pop out every now and then :)

We thought we were all done until Sawyer spotted one more room that we missed. So he got to dress up like an angel, get his picture taken and decorate this card with tons of nativity scene stickers. It was a really fun morning and Sawyer is already talking about all his friends that he wants to bring with him next year!