Weekly Update: 12.7.25
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.
Isaiah 9:2, reading for the first Sunday of Advent
Advent dawned on our family this week, bringing light and festivity to ordinary moments.
We have been very intentional this year to celebrate Advent during Advent, letting our anticipation of Christmas build during these weeks of preparation. We are waiting on our tree, and we are being selective in our music choices. We’ve found that, far from dampening our holiday spirits, we’ve been enjoying aspects of Advent we’ve often taken for granted.
One tradition we have focused on this year is our Advent wreath. We made pine wreathes when I was a teen, but when we moved into town, we switched to metal wreaths that didn’t need refreshed throughout the season. This year, inspired by Kendra Tierney’s The Catholic All Year Compendium, we opted to make time for the real thing. For the first time in decades, Bonnie-Jean took our nieces to gather greenery in the woods. She found a variety of materials, including juniper and rosehips. After mass on Sunday, she assembled the wreath with help from several ladies in the family. I mostly watched while doing a little light decorating around the bunkhouse. We all sipped latte’s our dad made us on our old manual espresso machine.
Our advent wreath is stunning. We’ve cared for it by misting it throughout each day. We know that we will have to renew it throughout the season as parts dry out, but the temporal character of the wreath is part of what makes it real. Bonnie made another wreath later in the week to hang by our front door.
Cold weather kept us indoors during the earlier parts of the week, which suited me just fine, as I’ve still been dealing with a cold of some kind. I stayed busy doing bookwork and tweaking building plans. One afternoon, I brought boards inside to stain and seal them at our kitchen table. It’s not ideal, but now that the temps are so low outside, we don’t have many options. Working inside was a fun change, surrounded by family chatter with free access to hot drinks. Looking at the forecast, it seems this will be a norm during the holiday season.
We had our first snow on Monday — which made the first of December feel positively festive. It was so pretty watching the snow fall, even though we didn’t have very much stick. We had to keep the fire going most of the week, which meant we needed firewood. Grace helped our Dad get some one afternoon when he was home from work and our brothers contributed to wood gathering and splitting after work hours.
Grace and Bonnie-Jean took advantage of the cold weather to start the arduous pumpkin processing project. We don’t have a pressure canner, so we are processing the pumpkins a bit at a time and using them in recipes. Grace found a simple Instant Pot method online for cooking pumpkin. Once cooked, they are running it through a food processor before straining it in a cheesecloth. Grace and Bonnie-Jean have been using the same method to process other winter squash as well. This week’s menu has featured various crisps and soups. The honey-nut squash curry soup was a particular hit.
On one tolerably cool day this week, my dad and I built a ladder to the small storage loft in we sisters’ room. The ladder is a simple two-by-six affair. Dad cut the lumber, Bonnie-Jean sanded, and I helped assemble. We finished it with Eco Wood Treatment for a one-step rustic look.
One highlight of the week was installing the last of our windows. Because we had our tent so close to the bunkhouse, we were not able to install three windows up high in we sister’s and in Jeremiah’s storage lofts. It’s been on our to-do list since the tent was taken down, but yesterday we made it happen. Levi did most of the outside work, while I worked inside — cutting the house wrap, installing flashing tape, then cleaning and caulking the windows. It’s amazing how much the windows have brightened up our spaces. We still need to add trim, but having the windows installed is the first step to finishing the inside and outside of that part of the bunkhouse.
On Friday, I had a big surprise when my brother Jeremiah gave me an early birthday present. Before I moved from Branson back in 2020, I sold my piano. I’ve missed playing, and I’ve hoped to at least get myself a keyboard at some point. Jeremiah had heard me talking about this, and he surprised me with a lovely little digital piano this week. I’ve used a digital piano before, back in college when I took lessons. It’s the perfect option for our bunkhouse due to its size and ability to work with headphones. It’s such a beautiful gift — so much nicer than anything I planned to get. I feel so incredibly spoiled and blessed. Right away, I sat down to run through a favorite Advent hymn. We are all looking forward to some festive family sing-alongs in the coming days.
Yesterday was the Feast of St. Nicholas. Our nieces and nephew were tickled to wake up and find their shoes full of treats. We set out our St. Nicholas figure, which we had kept packed up until now. We read a bit about the saint’s history, both facts and legends. Bonnie-Jean and Erin fixed a delicious Turkish stew for dinner, and Bonnie made Turkish flat bread, both a nod to the famous Saint Nick, who was Bishop of Myra in Turkey. We made gingerbread cookies, eating some and saving the rest for Christmas. We finished the night with some Bisschopswijn (Bishop’s wine), a type of mulled wine with fresh oranges and lemons. Remembering famous saints like Nicholas has helped frame our Advent celebration, as we strive to live lives in light of Christ’s first coming and in anticipation of his second coming. This is the sort of life modeled by saints of the church — Andrew, who we remembered last Sunday; Nicholas, who we remember yesterday; and Ambros, who we remember today. Such focus gives meaning to our homestead routines, providing light to these dark winter days.
