Stir Up Sunday

Stir Up Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent, takes it's name from a prayer, which reads:

"Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the will of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen."

It is also the traditional time to stir up the annual pudding.  We, however, do not make Christmas pudding so we take this opportunity to stir up our own traditional Christmas goodies.

It is our tradition to mix up our hot chocolate mix that we will need to stock our hot chocolate bar and to get us through the winter.

Oftentimes we stir up a handful of other goodies - this year four batches of cookie dough and a batch of spiced tea mix.

(By the way, the boys really do look forward to this and they really did enjoy it despite the hidden faces and "bored" looks; that was just a guise for the camera.)

The spiced tea really brought back memories.  My mom used to make it in large quantities and package it up to be gifted to school teachers, bus drivers, piano teachers, so on and so forth.  My mom was great like that - loved it then, love it now!

And, of course, after stirring everything up we have to sample our goodies - hot chocolate for the boys, spiced tea for me and cookies all the way around!