God Jul

God Jul from Noway!  We are starting to get into the Christmas spirit here.  When deciding what to bring with us to Norway we decided to just bring a few Christmas decorations.  I didn't take much time to go through our decorations in those final weeks that we had to prepare for the move.  I grabbed what I could get to easily and figured if I couldn't remember then I wasn't going to miss it now.  There are few things that I wish I would have grabbed, but for the most part it is liberating to only have a few decorations.  I have picked up a few things, but I have tried to only buy unique decorations that we can include with the rest of our decorations one day.  

This is our tree from Ikea, it is only a couple of feet tall, but it is up on a little table and it is just perfect.  

Our stockings are hung in the window, high above little hands that would love to pull them down and play with them.   These will be going back to the US with us when we travel for Christmas.  

 Our beautiful nativity is in our dining room.

 I found the little red God Jul tin at my favorite thrift store here, I love the red that Norwegians use at Christmas.

 Our Advent book that we are using again this year.  Thanks to Becky Marshall at Champion Forest Baptist Church for taking the time to put this together.  We love the Bible verses that help our children understand why we celebrate Christmas and the suggested activities are great too.  Some of the Houston specific ones make me homesick, but also ready to find new activities and start new traditions.

A Norwegian tradition we have been trying out is the Jule Brus, or Christmas juice.  This was just like orange flavored soda.  We have tried another one that had a little bit sweeter flavor.  They are all quite tasty and fun to try.  

 God Jul everyone! We are looking forward to spending our Christmas with family.  We won't get to see everyone we would like to, but we are going to see A LOT of people we love!

I will be back with more stories of international travel with 3 little ones, many fun Christmas memories made, and all of my shopping finds.