Our Jesse Tree

So, true to my previous post just a couple of days ago, I have our Jesse Tree supplies set up and ready to go! I printed out Ann Voskamp's free devotional booklet (complete with ornament pictures!) at her blog, A Holy Experience. I printed the ornaments on white card stock, then I measured them all and created a Word document with backgrounds sized to match each ornament (I can email it to you if you like), printed that on green card stock and mounted the pictures onto the green backgrounds with double sided tape with red ribbon in between.

And I even let Sophia & Olivia help me! Anyone who knows me knows that I generally have little no patience for crafts as I feel the perfectionist need to fix everything they do and freak out a little lot when things don't go as planned. And let's be honest here, do they ever go as planned with kidlets? I think not. Despite a few moments with one certain daughter which shall remain nameless the younger one, I managed to stop myself from freaking out and we had a very enjoyable time completing the project to my perfectionist standards! ;) Sophia cut the ribbon to the right length and Olivia wrecked helped me with the tape. They turned out great!
Emma was not impressed when she got home from school and found out we had done it without her, so I let her put on extra ornaments. ;)

I'm finding the devotionals a little bit of a stretch for our kids, so I got out our Jesus Storybook Bible and The Big Picture Story Bible to supplement the material.

Side note: if you do not yet have the Jesus Storybook Bible, go get it right now.
I will wait for you.
Got it? OK, good.
But seriously, you really need to get it. It's the best children's Bible I've read, and we have more than several! You can read my review on it here. My only complaint is that I wish it had more stories. The girls are particularly disappointed that the Queen Esther story is not included.

Both the Jesus Storybook Bible and the Big Picture Storybook Bible (the former even more than the latter) excel at showing you how the OT events point to the coming of our Messiah. Which is exactly what the Jesse Tree is all about!

So, I went through both Bibles and wrote in the page #'s that coincided with the Jesse Tree devotionals. There were very few days that did not have at least one supplementary children's Bible passage to go with it. So, depending on how much time we have, we will read the same passage up to 3 times! Talk about getting it to sink in - repetition is key, right? ;)

Like I said in my previous post, we are starting late, so we will usually be doing two per day until we catch up. I'm so glad we started late. It's not too late for you to start too! In fact, if you start on the 12th, you could do 2 per day (one in the morning, one at night) and still get them all in for Christmas time!

This is definitely going to be a yearly tradition at our house from now on!